J.B. Moreno wrote: > In article <3C31ADF6.9000301@nospam>, > Chris Lee <nospam@nospam> wrote: > > >>DeMoN LaG wrote: >><snip> >> >>>MS won't let you use Mozilla Mail to access hotmail. At least, not >>>for long, you'd have to deal with constantly updating Mozilla Mail >>>to keep up with MS breaking it >>> >><snip> >> >>That is precisley why Mozilla mail-news needs to abstract the mail >>protocols and allow for protocol 'plugins' so that it is easy to add or >>change a protocol. >> > > I don't know if you're a troll or a simply unwilling to grasp the > underlying idea: Hotmail is a proprietary protocol, MS doesn't tell > people what it is, you'd first have to discover just what it consisted > of (and I imagine that would not be exactly easy), then deal with the > fact that MS would change it as soon as you /did/ discover what it > consisted of, and probably sue you to boot. > > The simple fact of the matter is MS is saying "we don't want to play > with you" and as long as that is true, it's a waste of time for others > to try to do so secretly; the best that could be done would be to > petition MS to disclose the protocol. And unless they change their > strategy sometime soon such a petition would have to come from someone > other than mozilla.org (because mozilla.org is open source and > releasing the protocol to them would be the same as releasing it to > everyone). So while there is some /faint/ chance of them releasing the > information to Netscape (a big chunk of cash could improve that > chance), there is practically none that it will be added to Mozilla.
Oddly enough, I went through a similar thread in the Microsoft Public newgroups. It seems that someone wanted Outlook Express to be able to access Netscape Webmail. The Microsoft flunkies there claim that *anyone* who wants to write a client to access Hotmail *can* do so. They also claim that the Netscape Webmail protocol is a Netscape proprietary protocol to lock out non-Netscape users. I get a sense of Pot calling Kettle "Black" out of all of this. And my sense of the whole thing is this: MS doesn't want to spend the time to develop NS Webmail access for MS products, and NS doesn't want to spend the time to develop Hotmail access for NS products. Fair enough... NormanM
