Hello,

I've been lurking for the past 2 weeks or so and the list seems pretty
quiet for the most part. I've also noticed that the github repository is
more-or-less inactive and that makes me rather sad :-(

Who are the developers that are actively still hacking on the project?

What can be done to help?

Is development taking place on github? Or is it happening elsewhere?

I noticed that there is an outstanding bug filed for the C# version of
BouncyCastle to implement S/MIME support that is apparently waiting on a
javamail replacement on .NET.

If that is the case, then perhaps that is the best way that I can
contribute to this project.

I've currently implemented a C# MIME library called MimeKit on GitHub:
http://github.com/jstedfast/MimeKit

I have loads of experience writing MIME libraries/parsers spanning back
more than a decade and have implemented PGP/MIME in Evolution and in my
personal side-project, GMime (a MIME parser written in C). I also
contributed to and/or wrote the S/MIME support in both of those products as
well as implementing S/MIME support in MimeKit recently.

However, the problem I am now facing is that Mono's System.Security does
not implement all of the CMS APIs and is missing some of the meat in the
X509Certificate2 APIs as well, which is what has brought me to
BouncyCastle. Presently, MimeKit's implementation of S/MIME only works on
Windows, but I want it to work on Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android (for those
using Xamarin.iOS and/or Xamarin.Android). Windows Phone 8 would also be
nice, but I suspect that would be doable using Microsoft's APIs.

Since I'm also interested in adding PGP/MIME (rfc2015, 3156, and whatever
the latest update to those specs are), I've been trying to find a nice and
elegant way of doing that in C#. Sadly, C# APIs do not provide a nice way
to do IPC with programs like gnupg, so my options are limited if I want
portability... again leading me to BouncyCastle for the OpenPGP
implementation.


I guess what I want to know is:

1. Would this be something the Bouncy Castle development team would be
interested in?

2. Is the Bouncy Castle development team even still around in any real
capacity? If the project is more-or-less dead, I'll probably just fork
Bouncy Castle to make whatever modifications I need and continue on my way.
If, at some later point, development starts back up again, they are free to
use MimeKit (and I highly recommend that you do, because every other .NET
MIME parser that exists currently is broken beyond repair).

3. JavaMail is more than just a MIME library. MimeKit is not. Is this a
problem?

I am considering working on a "MailKit" library which would be built on top
of MimeKit in order to add IMAP, POP, and SMTP support but I don't
necessarily want to commit myself to doing that alone. I should also note
that MimeKit and my plans for MailKit are not an identical API to JavaMail
(I don't know if that matters or not), similar to an extent, but based more
on a C library I had been working on before I threw my hands in the air and
decided that even if I were to finish, I'd never want to write another mail
client in C/C++. (This is what has led to the development of MimeKit which
is loosely based on my GMime library).


Hoping to hear back,

Jeff

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