Moving mailserver: URI Scheme to Historic

Abstract

This document registers the mailserver: URI scheme as historic in the IANA URI registry.

Status of This Memo

This is an Internet Standards Track document.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6196.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

   1. Introduction and Overview .......................................2
   2. Security Considerations .........................................2
   3. IANA Considerations .............................................2
   4. References ......................................................3
      4.1. Normative References .......................................3
      4.2. Informative References .....................................3

1. Introduction and Overview

RFC 1738 [RFC1738] registers the mailserver: URI scheme as provisional in the IANA URI registry defined by [RFC4395], defining it as "Access to data available from mail servers" with no further details provided. The author of this document is not aware of any other more detailed definition of the mailserver: URI scheme. The mailserver: URI scheme as currently specified is not interoperable. There is a small risk that somebody would decide to implement this scheme by looking at IANA's URI scheme registry, possibly inventing some undocumented syntax for it. In order to minimize such risk, this document discourages any future implementations of this URI scheme and asks IANA to mark it as Historic in the URI scheme registry.

There were some previous attempts to provide detailed documentation of the mailserver: URI scheme, but those efforts were not successful. Implementors interested in providing instructions for generating an email [RFC5322] message can instead use the mailto: URI scheme [RFC6068]. Implementors interested in referencing a message or a set of messages available from a mailstore over IMAP [RFC3501], POP [RFC1939], or web [RFC2616] can instead use the imap: [RFC5092], pop: [RFC2384] or http: [RFC2616] URIs, respectively.

2. Security Considerations

In the past, the mailserver: URI scheme was never properly documented and thus doesn't interoperate. There are no known implementations of this URI scheme.

3. IANA Considerations

IANA has re-registered the mailserver: URI scheme as Historic in the URI scheme registry and updated the reference to point to this document.

4. References

4.1. Normative References

   [RFC4395]  Hansen, T., Hardie, T., and L. Masinter, "Guidelines and
              Registration Procedures for New URI Schemes", BCP 35,
              RFC 4395, February 2006.

4.2. Informative References

   [RFC1738]  Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, "Uniform
              Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December 1994.
   
   [RFC1939]  Myers, J. and M. Rose, "Post Office Protocol - Version 3",
              STD 53, RFC 1939, May 1996.
   
   [RFC2384]  Gellens, R., "POP URL Scheme", RFC 2384, August 1998.
   
   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
   
   [RFC3501]  Crispin, M., "INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION
              4rev1", RFC 3501, March 2003.
   
   [RFC5092]  Melnikov, A. and C. Newman, "IMAP URL Scheme", RFC 5092,
              November 2007.
   
   [RFC5322]  Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
              October 2008.
   
   [RFC6068]  Duerst, M., Masinter, L., and J. Zawinski, "The 'mailto'
              URI Scheme", RFC 6068, October 2010.

Author's Address

   Alexey Melnikov
   Isode Limited
   5 Castle Business Village
   36 Station Road
   Hampton, Middlesex  TW12 2BX
   UK
   
   EMail: Alexey.Melnikov@isode.com