Technical Summary
This document requests that the application/MBOX media-type be
authorized for allocation by IANA, according to the terms
specified in RFC 2048.
UNIX-like operating systems have historically made widespread use
of "mbox" database files for a variety of local email purposes. In
the common case, mbox files store linear sequences of one or more
electronic mail messages, with local email clients treating the
database as a logical folder of email messages. mbox databases are
also used by a variety of other messaging tools, such as mailing
list management programs, archiving and filtering utilities,
messaging servers, and other related applications. In recent
years, mbox databases have also become common on a large number of
non-UNIX computing platforms, for similar kinds of purposes.
The increased pervasiveness of these files has led to an increased
demand for a standardized, network-wide interchange of these files
as discrete database objects. In turn, this dictates a need for a
media-type definition for mbox files in general, which is the
subject and purpose of this memo.
Working Group Summary
This document is the work of an individual submitter. It was
subjected to MIME-types review, but it is has not been reviewed
by an IETF working group. MIME-type review comments have been
incorporated into the document.
Protocol Quality
Scott Hollenbeck has reviewed this specification for the IESG.