non-SMTP uses (was: Thoughts on MixMinion archives)

[Zooko <zooko@zooko.com>]

I'm "chiming in" here...

Len wrote the lines prepended with "> > ".

 Nick wrote:
>
> > The talk in the above mentioned archived message about "SMTP extension
> > modules" confuses me. Why wouldn't MixMinion just hand off messages to be
> > delivered by SMTP to the local MTA?
> 
> Sorry about the confusion--what you describe is the intended behavior of
> a SMTP delivery module.  The idea is to make all delivery methods into
> isolated modulres, to make the security of the core easier to examine.


<chime>

This issue is really important to me.  In fact, just now thinking about it 
I realized that I'm really *not* likely to use MM to do send anonymous 
e-mail.  I don't send anonymous e-mail.  But I am very likely to extend my 
Mnet distributed filesystem [1] to use MM as its messaging layer, thus 
adding anonymity to the features of Mnet.

So it's important to me not only because, as Nick writes, it makes it easier 
to analyze the security of the "Mix Core" without interference from anything 
involving SMTP, but also because I want to actually use it for non-SMTP 
purposes and I really don't want the SMTP usage cluttering up the interface, 
slowing down the development, causing bugs, and so forth, in the "Mix Core" 
module.

To make this kind of stuff concrete and also to help generate an API, I intend 
to write a "CommStrat.MixMinion" class for Mnet, which will be parallel to the 
current "CommStrat.TCP" and "CommStrat.Relay" classes visible in this file: [2].
That'll only be a dozen lines of Python and once it's done then it should work 
with absolutely no further changes when "MixMinion.py", implementing the Mix 
Core API, is complete.  (In theory...)

Obviously I don't intend to defame the importance or value of anonymous e-mail. 
 ;-)

By the way another potential use is for an "instant messaging" feature that 
might get added to Mnet.

</chime>

Regards,

Zooko

[1] http://mnet.sf.net/
[2] http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/egtp/egtp/common/CommStrat.py?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup