On Nov 23, 7:41, Dave Crocker wrote:
Subject: Making an investment at the Mime Rate.
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}On the matter of slowness. We have seen examples of explosive adoption on
}the Internet. Usually, they occur when folks mostly use free software.
Or when there is a void to fill, or where "usage" has a lower cost to
businesses. Free software does not necessarily lend itself to low-cost use
(note provider revenu models).
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}This means that Mime adoption is contingent upon vendor incorporation.
}Since this isn't a new market, but rather an enhancement to an existing
}market, the Mime incorporation must be fit into existing, very-full product
}planning. My guess is that there also was some hesitation by vendors; it
}was not instantly obvious to all vendors that Mime was the right thing to
}adopt, given 10 years of focus on X.400. All of this slows things down.
}
}So we are a few years down the pike and wonder how things are going. It's
}clear that we can't say something simple, like "everyone is using Mime."
Unfortunatly, this may extrapolate to "... has a gateway to SMTP/MIME". If the
industry is left to itself, this is probably what we'll see (I sincerly hope
I'm way off base here). Hopefully inertia can build somewhere somehow to get
MIME at the desktop not just on "the other side" of the local MUA/MTA pair.
Mosaic/Web may have a hand in this if more awareness is generated on its use
of MIME.
}But perhaps we can.
:-)
}First, Erik's quick survey uncovered perhaps 10 different end-user products
}and a gateway product in use. From the presentation I did the following
}week, folks in the audience cited several more different sources.
Would like to see it. Did I just over-shoot the msg on this list?
--
Cheers!
[ psr ]