Re: gmail+imap+smtp (oauth2)

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > 1. What kind of thing is devmail?  Is it a program?  Is it a service?

  > Yes, both: a program that provides a service.

I'll try to clear up the distinction I'm making.

                                                   I'm not sure how to
  > differentiate between these two classifications...

A program and a service are totally different kinds of things.

A program is a list of instructions.  It can be stored in a file.
Copies of that file can be made and distributed.  They can be run.
You could get a copy of a program and run it yourself.

It is impossible to do ANY of those things to a service.  Consider
Twitter.  You can't put Twitter in a file.  It is impossible to copy
Twitter (what would that mean?), or "run Twitter" (what would that
mean?).

A service is something which does things, and which you can
communicate with.  You can't "run" it or "copy" it, but you can talk
with it.  It may do some things at your request; it may answer some
kinds of questions.  Or not.

A service can be operated by a computer.  Or by a human being.  In
principle, you as a user communicating with the service can't
necessarily tell how it is operated, and it may not matter anyway.

If a service is operated by running a program on a computer, for
clarity of our thinking we need to keep the distinction between the
service and the program.  What's true of one is probably not true of
the other.

When you talked about "using devmail", which of these did you do>
Did you talk with a service set up by someone else?
Did you run the devmail program on a computer of yours?
Both?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)