The problem they are trying to solve is wicked. The problem with IMAP is not that it's awfully complicated - that would be easier to fix with a cleaner and simpler library/SDK. The problem with IMAP is that every service provider fucks up in implementing it in new and surprising ways.
It's very hard to write a program to work with Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook properly without implementing their edge cases. Let alone many thousands of other providers, and many millions of privately hosted servers.
IMAP should be fixed or replaced with something that the implementor cannot screw easily. But that will likely never happen so I'm going to use this.
There's really nothing at all stopping intelligent people getting together and "fixing" IMAP, rather than building a compatibility bridge between siloed data gatherer A and reticent data hoarder B.
I personally have zero problems with IMAP4. I run my own server. You could too... In fact if you and 10 friends want to each pay $2.00/month, you could rent and share a 48GB Linode - setup your own IMAP server with CalDav and whatever else. All secured with ssh public key only access and a free SSL cert from startssl. So you only get 4GB of storage space each... I wouldn't see that as much of show stopper for me or most people I know.
It's very hard to write a program to work with Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook properly without implementing their edge cases. Let alone many thousands of other providers, and many millions of privately hosted servers.
IMAP should be fixed or replaced with something that the implementor cannot screw easily. But that will likely never happen so I'm going to use this.