Open Arsenal

An Open Infrastructure for Portable Email Addresses

OpenMail Identity is an open infrastructure for portable email addresses based on a simple principle: an email address belongs to the addressee, not the provider. The specification separates persistent email identity from the mailbox, hosting service, and infrastructure used to deliver messages. This allows individuals, organizations, and other authorized entities to retain the same email address while changing providers, hosting environments, or delivery services.

The specification provides a portability framework that allows an address to move between providers without requiring the addressee to abandon their established identity. Its portability features include provider-independent addressing, transfer authorization, ownership verification, transfer confirmation, temporary routing, continuity services, provider failure handling, emergency portability, and protections against unauthorized transfers. The system is designed so that a provider change does not have to mean an address change.

OpenMail Identity also defines mailbox portability features for users who want to move more than their address. Mailbox migration, message history, metadata, folders, labels, contacts, archives, backups, and restoration can be supported independently from address portability. Security features provide additional protection through ownership credentials, transfer authentication, multi-factor authorization, recovery mechanisms, cryptographic controls, security events, and audit records. Trust features establish ways to verify ownership, providers, transfers, delegated authority, and the continuing legitimacy of an address across different services.

The architecture is designed for interoperability, continuity, and provider independence. Optional modules can extend the system with aliases, delegation, organizational addresses, shared mailboxes, reputation, privacy controls, disaster recovery, provider failure recovery, governance, dispute resolution, audit and provenance, and enterprise portability. OpenMail Identity is intended to make email addresses durable digital identities rather than disposable identifiers tied to a particular service, giving people and organizations greater control over where and how their email is delivered.

This specification is released under the AGPL-3.0+ and is free to use with required Section 7 attribution. Organizations seeking attribution-free deployment may obtain a Specification Branding License, with fees based on use and deployment scope.