Re: Making GNUS continue to work with Gmail

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

On 14/08/2020 11:13, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:

>> *2. What Thunderbird does data point, and not just a google problem:
> [...]
>> Google, Yahoo, Mail.ru, Yandex, Aol and Microsoft
>>
>> https://searchfox.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/base/src/OAuth2Providers.jsm#51
> 
> I guess it would be rude for Emacs to just use those credentials.  :-)
> 

Heh. Considering it for a sec, even if "borrowing" such other known 
client id and impersonating them is technically possible (in rough 
hypothetical, haven't looked what thunderbird registered in depth, 
particularly its redirect), it is not really viable in terms of ordinary 
user expectations: users would then presumably be asked a very confusing 
and suspicious "mozilla thunderbird wants access to your gmail email 
account, allow?" or something along those lines in their browser during 
the rfc8252 flow (if implemented) in what is actually a gnu emacs sign 
in, and an attentive user would presumably immediately abort and worry.

Does remind me that different emacs-external elisp packages available 
from melpa etc. can (and might well already) have different client ids 
for various providers statically embedded for their own use. Of course 
that's pretty much just Not GNU's Problem in legal terms so long as they 
don't make their way into official emacs (+elpa) sources, just wanted to 
make a pedantic point that it's not 1:1, different things happening to 
run within a user's emacs can certainly have distinct client 
registrations even for the same provider at least technically.