[Discuss] Sieve

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Dan Ritter wrote:
> Tom Metro wrote:
>> ...server-size filtering. What technique are you using?
> 
> The simplest: I observed that people generally spend a long
> period of time with the same filtering rules, have small bursts
> of changes, and then continue - so I deliver through mailfilter,
> procmail or Mail::Audit or whatever my very small set of users 
> prefer. They log in to change rules, or ask me to do it for
> them.

I buy the premise that mail rules probably change quite infrequently.
That fits my own experience with my own rules.

Still, it would be an annoyance to have to broker those changes through
an administrator.

I gather you didn't think Sieve[1] was worth the effort to implement?
Sieve seemed to have a lot of promise, with talk of mail client plugins
to manage the server-hosted rules, but I haven't heard much about it
outside Dovecot circles. Though reviewing the current list of servers[2]
and clients[3] that support Sieve, the adoption seems OK, even if still
small. The other notable server is Cyrus IMAP, and on the client side
Thunderbird (via extension) and Mulberry support it, as well as a bunch
of lesser known webmail products. There are a few stand-alone desktop
clients, too (gsieve, kio_sieve, one for OS X, and one for Emacs).

1. http://sieve.info/ and http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve
2. http://sieve.info/servers
3. http://sieve.info/clients


> For a larger user population,
> http://fritz.potsdam.edu/projects/email/
> describes an architecture I am contemplating adapting.

qmail based? I lost my taste for qmail years ago. The larger
architecture may still be a good idea.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/