Exec'ing a script from Cyrus when imapd has a client

[Greg A. Woods]

At Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:21:24 +0100, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel at free.fr> wrote:
Subject: Re: Exec'ing a script from Cyrus when imapd has a client
> 
> Do you gain anything if Cyrus doesn't
> fulfill the needs of some users ?

Did I ever say Cyrus should or should not meet the needs of some users?

I think you've got something backwards here.

Why should any one "product" meet the needs of all users?  That's the
"if all you've got is a hammer..." analogy.  Cyrus IMAP will _NEVER_
meet the needs of all users, and that's fundamentally what I've been
trying to say from the start.  If you don't need it then don't try to
wedge it into your implementation!

We all gain if we can avoid the "all you've got is a hammer" trap, and
indeed we all gain if we can help each other avoid that trap too.

If I'm not too mistaken it seems most everyone who wanted to use an IMAP
server as a client-level tool (by employing the likes of fetchmail) were
clearly falling for the "I have this Cyrus IMAP Hammer and I want to use
it to manage all of my e-mail even though I'm not running a server" trap.
Certainly that seemed to me to be the OP's situation.

The real fear I have is that as a result others will believe that this
kind of use is condoned and approved, or worse that these folks were
actually setting up such things for other groups of users.  In both
cases we end up with naive users who will not understand the issues
involved.   Issues such as mangled headers, unreliable delivery, loss of
e-mail, and so on.

Sure, it's all fine and dandy for someone to want to learn about a
product like Cyrus IMAP (or even fetchmail) by installing and using it
in some form where they can personally make use of it.

However if the goal is just to make something work in the real world for
end users then we really need to go back to the fundamental end-user
requirements and figure out how best to meet them without creating
hidden problems along the way simply because we've got this hammer in
our hands and we're dying to bang away on something.  If the user wants
some screws installed then we'd be doing them a huge favour if we would
go and find the proper screwdriver to do the job for them!

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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