And now come the instant messengers.Īs I already said Signal, Threema, Telegram AND WhatsApp are broken. An open, collaborative process defining an interoperable system. All of this allows that any mail client (MUA = Mail User Agent) can talk via any mail server (MTA = Mail Transfer Agent). Later the transport of the messages (originally they used multiple protocols such as CPYNET, UUCP or FTP) transitioned in 1981 to SMTP which is still todays way to transport mail. Including an address scheme using Raymond Tomlinson who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET And many of the aspects solved back then still live in today’s mail infrastructure. That summed up later in the document RFC 733: STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA NETWORK TEXT MESSAGES. RFC 724: Proposed Official Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Messages.RFC 561: Standardizing Network Mail Headers.Layering on existing definitions (such as TCP/IP) they created: To achieve this they agreed on a common terminology and on common standards to exchange messages in a collaborative way. The second topic is our primary issue here. And hook up different types of computers types that were not interoperable at the time: A DEC PDP-10, a SDS Sigma 7, an IBM 360/75 and SDS 940. Invent a packet-switching network with distributed control that was intended to survive a nuclear attack.

The origin of mail were a couple of geeks who wanted to exchange messages on ARPANET (the internets great grandmother). Imagine a world where for each mail recipient using a separate domain, I would need separate mail client? Or in other words: Gmail users can only communicate with Gmail users. Shall I migrate to Signal, Threema or Telegram? No, because they all have - WhatsApp included - the same problem: They are walled gardens.

Signal vs telegram vs threema