Egregoros

if proton mail were serious about improving e2ee email, they would've worked to have a standard extension for e2ee via smtp that other MTAs could implement, so that encrypted emails would not be limited to proton mail's non distributed, non self-hostable, proprietary smtp servers

@navi @kouhai unfortunately, SMTP development is led by google, who has an overt interest in making sure the protocol offers no competitive advantages to amazon, and e2ee is contrary to this goal

@atax1a they don't need to get it into smtp proper, not at first at least -- esmtp supports extension discovery via EHLO, so give the server a PROTON_E2EE extension and if supported, use e2ee by some standard extension protonmail would document themselves

now any MTA can implement that, make use of it -- eventually if google doesn't budge, we still have plenty of other options

@navi yes, we know how ESMTP works, we've been self-hosting our own email for over 20 years :)

@atax1a then i do not understand your point about google controlling SMTP development, we can do our own thing, but protonmail does not want to

@navi you're describing a technical solution (Just™ implement the feature) to a social problem (we already cannot reliably send mail to google, who is actively attempting to kill email)

@atax1a sending email to google was never part of the problem i described

the problem i described is protonmail selling itself on e2ee while having it's backend software proprietary, and having no intention of improving the wider ecosystem, basically funneling people to use protonmail so they can have encrypted conversations with other protonmail users, and *only* other protonmail users

never mentioned google, and they have nothing to do with the problem at hand