Sieve mail filtering language was inspired by (and hopefully lessons were learned) from the Flames filtering language.

The history of Sieve language is described below:

<table colspan="2" border="1"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top">1994-95</td><td valign="top">informal meetings between the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University on IMAP issues touch upon mail filtering architecture. An initial architectural proposal is made for how server-side filtering of mail might work.</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">December 7, 1995</td><td valign="top">At IMSP BOF at 34th IETF Meeting at Dallas, Texas, discussion of Sieve-like architecture.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">January 8, 1996</td><td valign="top">MTA Filtering special interest group meeting held at <a href="http://www.washington.edu/imap/meeting.1st/">First International IMAP conference, University of Washington, Seattle</a>. Significant discussion is belayed at this time in favor of more pressing internet mail issues.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">June 24, 1996</td><td valign="top">36th IETF, Montreal, Canada - informal interest polled at the meeting of DRUMS (the working group resposible for revision of the RFC822 message standard and RFC821 SMTP standard).</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">November 7, 1996</td><td valign="top">MTA Filtering BOF meeting held at <a href="http://www.washington.edu/imap/meeting.2nd/">Second International IMAP conference, University of Washington, Seattle</a>. This BOF was attended by over 40 persons from a variety of vendors, and was the first significant public discussion of the architecture by a fairly large number of internet mail server and client vendors.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">December 12, 1996 </td><td valign="top">37th IETF meeting in San Jose - informal BOF on mail filtering and SPAM [<a href="http://www.imc.org/ietf-mta-filters/mail-archive/msg00000.html">raw minutes</a>]. This meeting started out as an informal discussion of anti-spamming techniques, and the need for a distinct, standardized language for server-side filtering was discussed. The conclusion was that this should be pursued as a separate activity. Participants of the November IMAP meeting not also at this meeting were notified of this by private mail.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">January 11, 1997</td><td valign="top">mta-filters mailing list established at Internet Mail Consortium; first posting.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">January 15, 1997</td><td valign="top">Strawman taken on mta-filters mailing list to establish continued interest in standardization.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">March 24, 1997</td><td valign="top">First International ACAP Meeting held in Pittsburgh, PA. First draft of Sieve specification reviewed in informal working group.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">October 24, 1997</td><td valign="top">Second version of Sieve specification issued.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">January 28, 1998</td><td valign="top">Third version of Sieve specification issued.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">January 28, 1998</td><td valign="top">First version of Vacation Sieve extension specification issued.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">Feburary 26, 1998</td><td valign="top">Second International ACAP Meeting held in San Diego, CA, hosted by Qualcomm, Inc. Sieve requirements for ACAP storage and transport were discussed.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">March 31, 1998</td><td valign="top">First formal Sieve BOF meeting at 41st IETF, Los Angeles, California. [<a href="http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98mar/index.html">Official Minutes</a>] The results of this meeting were that there was strong consensus that the general work should proceed as official standards-track work, while there was a mixture of opinion with respect to scope issues. It was decided here that a formal Working Group was probably not necessary, pending implementation of a revised specification. The <a href="http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/%7Etjs/sieve-bof-slides.ps">slides for a presentation on the syntax of Sieve at the time (now obsolete) are available here</a> (in PostScript format).</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">August 7, 1998</td><td valign="top">Fourth version of Sieve specification issued.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">November 17, 1998</td><td valign="top">First version of IMAP Flags Sieve extension specification issued.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">November 18, 1998</td><td valign="top">Fifth version of Sieve specification issued.</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">December 7, 1998</td><td valign="top">informal design meeting at 43rd IETF, Orlando, Florida. [<a href="http://www.imc.org/ietf-mta-filters/mail-archive/msg00515.html">Informal minutes are here</a>.]</td> </tr> <tr>   <td valign="top">January 11, 1999</td><td valign="top">First open source sample implementation publically issued by Carnegie Mellon University.</td></tr>   <tr>   <td valign="top">February 24, 1999</td><td valign="top">Draft 007 of the Sieve spec posted to Internet Draft archive.</td> </tr>   <tr>   <td valign="top">March 16, 1999</td><td valign="top">Second official Sieve BOF, 44th IETF, Minneapolis [<a href="http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/99mar/44th-99mar-ietf-41.html#TopOfPage">Official Minutes</a>]</td> </tr>   <tr><td valign="top">June, 1999</td><td valign="top">Version 1.1 of CMU Sieve Release</td> </tr>   <tr> <td valign="top">July, 1999</td><td valign="top">Version 1.2 of CMU Sieve Release</td> </tr>   <tr>   <td valign="top">July 14, 1999</td><td valign="top">Draft 008 of Sieve spec posted</td> </tr>   <tr><td valign="top">September, 1999</td><td valign="top">Draft 009 of Sieve spec posted; "release candidate"</td></tr>   <tr> <td valign="top">April, 2000</td><td valign="top">Draft 010 of Sieve spec: last call to mailing list</td></tr>   </tbody></table>