Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                       A. Melnikov
Request for Comments: 6196                                 Isode Limited
Updates: 1738                                                 March 2011
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721


               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 (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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