Norman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > J.B. Moreno wrote: >> 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. >> [snip] > > 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're full of it. As I understand it (and I don't understand the Hotmail situation as well as I understand Netcenter), the protocol is public but the authentication scheme is propritetary. I tend to believe this, because there's no other explanation for why there aren't a dozen email clients out there that can access Hotmail. In fact, I'm not aware of many (any?) that speak any form of HTTPmail/WebDAV (which would make sense, since no provider is actually using it). > They also claim that the Netscape Webmail protocol is a Netscape > proprietary protocol to lock out non-Netscape users. Netcenter uses IMAP on top of the massive AOL mail system. Again, the protocol itself is public, but AOL (and by extension Netcenter) require special X-AOL IMAP commands and an authentication scheme that no one else knows. > 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... Microsoft would love to add AOL support to Outlook Express, but AOL won't let them. AOL won't even take Microsoft's money. It's all about maintaining your brand cohesion. Hell, Microsoft won't even take users' money to allow POP3 access, as Hotmail did prior to takeover (and until the practice was stopped by Microsoft). Obviously branding is more important. -- Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Finger/Web for PGP [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.lull.org/adam/
