With the free & open COI standard we enable every mail user to chat via email. We presented this idea last year, have in the meantime launched the COI plugin of the Dovecot IMAP server and the OX COI Messenger app. In this talk you will learn how the basic idea evolved over time, what we have learned during the journey, where we are heading to and: Why and how you should join us on that trip.

We presented the idea on last year's FOSDEM: Instead of trusting companies like Facebook, Tencent and rely on their infrastructure for personal communication, we wanted to create a new chat ecosystem based on open standards and federated infrastructure. As much as we like privacy-entered messengers like Signal, it's just another silo and you have to trust the provider. In the end all popular messaging services today are proprietary, closed and operated by single providers. This has unwilling consequences we are not willing to accept anymore: Your provider knows all about your social network: when you communicate with whom, the frequency of your communication and the number, type and length of your messages – even with end to end encryption in place. You are locked in as a user: You cannot simply change to another provider, because your friends and peers are also using your current provider. If you want to switch you would need to convince everyone to follow. And of course you would lose all your conversation history if you dare to move away. The network is only controlled by a single party, you cannot start hosting your own WhatsApp, WeChat or FB Messenger service. They set the rules and usually do not give you access to the API for creating your own software. So why not taking an existing network based on open protocols which is already used by almost everyone? Why not using.... email? It already provides a federated infrastructure and is based on open standards like SMTP and IMAP. Why not building build a chat ecosystem on top of it? We called it COI - Chat Over Imap. This was the initial idea and some key players joined the initiative around this idea right from the beginning: Dovecot (the most popular IMAP server), DeltaChat (an open source email based messenger) and Open-Xchange (an open source email technology and service provider) joined forces and kicked of COI - Chat Over IMAP. The Dovecot team started working on extending the existing IMAP protocol and build some services on top to allow encrypted push notifications, to reduce latency etc. The DeltaChat developers worked on improving the client's core and adjust it to the needs of the Open-Xchange team who worked on compatible Flutter-based clients for Android and iOS. Of course everything was a little more complicated than most of us thought, but in the end we made it: In October 2019 we presented beta versions of iOS and Android COI Messenger clients and we introduced the COI plugin for Dovecot. In this talk we will share the main challenges we have been facing while adding real-time messaging features to IMAP and how we solved them. And we will give insights into the problems we ran into in client development where we had to combine a Rust-based DeltaChat-Core code base with Flutter based mobile UIs and platform-specific native features.
We would also like to share with you what the main outstanding challenges are that might still stop us from being the WhatsApp killer we'd love to be. And of course we would love to encourage you to join the party.

Meet COI (Chat over IMAP) - a powerful contender for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other proprietary messengers. Based on email this open standards & open source iniative overcomes the network effect by providing a chat experience to over 3.8 billion active email users worldwide. By being backwards compatible with pure email, you do not need to convince all your friends, family and peers to join the new system - you can still engage with them and they can reach you. We cooperate with Delta Chat open source project to bundle efforts and ensure interoperability. Join this talk to learn about all things COI from Michael (Dovecot) and Robert (OX).

The COI standard is the best way to overcome the current messaging silos and allow everyone to compete on the same terms. Read on to learn why COI matters.

Problem

Most popular messaging services are currently proprietary, closed and operated by single providers. This leads to several problems:

• Privacy: The provider knows all about your social network: when you communicate with whom, the frequency of your communication and the number, type and length of your messages – even with end to end encryption in place.
• Unfair competition: Service providers depend on the rules set by the messaging owner and access to the API for participation. If the messaging provider changes the rules or chooses to offer your particular service itself, you are out of luck.
• Lock in: You cannot simply change to another provider, because your friends and peers are also using that service provider. If you want to switch you would need to convince everyone to join your new service provider. And of course you would lose all your conversation history if you dare to move away. Don’t like the new app version? Bad luck, you cannot choose another app.
• Silo: the network is only controlled by a single party, you cannot start hosting your own WhatsApp, WeChat or FB Messenger Service. Some providers like Facebook even control several popular messaging apps, like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Why Others do not Solve this Problem

Maybe you are thinking “I thought this is why we have Signal, Telegram and the other privacy-centric apps?” – they might very well be better than some of the more popular networks, but in the end, they control the network and other providers are locked out. Basically, you are exchanging one silo with another.

“What about XMPP and Matrix.org?” – glad you asked! We love XMPP and Matrix.org because they provide a great solution – this only solves the problem in theory though. With XMPP and Matrix.org-based services you would still need to convince everyone to join your new network. Easy in theory, very complex in practice!

“What about RCS? I thought Google fixes this?” – well, are you sure about Google? Google used XMPP in the past but then locked it down. Google tried to push several chat solutions out with only little success. So, Google’s track record is far from perfect. Most notably, however, RCS requires a device to have a phone number (MSISDN). As communication is quickly migrating towards pure IP based solutions, MSISDNs become relics of the past. Most new innovative devices come without MSISDNs, e.g. voice enabled devices such as Alexa or Google Home, VR and AR devices such as HoloLens or Oculus Rift, portable game consoles, etc. With this dependency on MSISDNs, RCS’ future is uncertain.

Meet COI

COI enhances an already existing communication system: email. This already solves lots of problems:

• It’s free, open and permission-less.
• You can reach more than 3.8 billion active email users – this overcomes the network effect!
• With COI’s backward compatibility, you can reach everyone, even when they are only using traditional email.

In this talk Michael and Robert will explain why COI really offers potential, the technical details about the new standards and what the next steps on this exciting journey are.