[imp] Mail clients and contact database lock-in

[Jaap Winius]

Hi list,

For the past six years I've been using IMP as my main mail client.  
While others prefer to use dedicated GUI mail clients instead, I love  
the fact that my client is the same everywhere and I'm never without  
my complete and up to date contact list.

Nevertheless, I have more than a few users who have ended up using a  
dedicated GUI mail client anyway. I can't help imagining, though, that  
they might have remained a little more interested in IMP/Horde if they  
could at least have continued to access -- or better yet, maintain --  
their Turba contact list from within their favorite mail client. My  
impression is that users who were once freed by IMAP/POP to use almost  
any mail client they wanted, still end up using only one in the end  
because of contact database lock-in. In the same way, even we IMP  
users are, to a lesser degree, locked into our Horde databases where  
the Turba contact information is stored.

I suppose it is possible to use LDAP to make Turba contact information  
available elsewhere, but I hear that of the mail clients that do  
include LDAP support, this is limited to email address lookup only. I  
don't believe that implementing this would help very much to change  
any minds.

Has the idea of making Turba contact information more available ever  
been given any serious consideration? Is there, perhaps, a Thunderbird  
plug-in that I haven't heard of yet? It would be interesting to hear  
what other people have to say about this subject.

Cheers,

Jaap