Your message dated: Thu, 08 May 1997 16:43:41 EDT

> Filtering MAIL FROM: is not mentioned anywhere in RFC 1123, AND IS BREAKING
> EXISTING, LEGITIMATE, E-MAIL.

    As has been quoted here before:

            RFCs 821, 822, and 1123 specify how email should be
        done in a Perfect World by the Angels, for the Angels, and
        of the Angels.

            However, this is 1997 -- there are no more Angels
        left, and this is about the most imperfect world as could
        possibly exist.


    Lose your love affair with that part of RFC 1123, because it
*is* going away, sooner or later.  Maybe not with whatever will
become of draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-04.txt, but sooner or later it
*will* go away.

    There's simply no other possible outcome for a feature that
was marked as "SHOULD NOT generate" six years ago, and is marked as
"MUST NOT generate" now.


    If we don't move forward, then by definition, we are moving
backwards (relatively speaking, since everyone and everything else
is moving forwards at astonishing speeds).

    Well, it's time to move forwards on this one.

> This is my last word on the subject. After all, the only legitimate recourse
> I have is to recommend that my correspondents switch to other, less
> draconian, service providers, and I've already done that.

    If that's what it takes to get your last word on the subject,
then I'm sorry that those few users will be lost, but I believe
that we'll more than make up for it in new users that flock to the
system because of the aggresive things we are doing to protect it
(and them) against things they constantly tell us they don't want
to receive (junkmail being the single number one complaint before
the flat fee/access debacle, and now the number one complaint again).

    Although there has been quite a bit of negative feedback from
certain people on these lists, I've still gotten more positive
feedback than negative, and there is a fundamental difference in the
sources of those two types of feedback.

    The positive feedback appears to be coming from folks who don't
really care too much how the underlying system works, they just
want it to work and prevent them from getting buried by junkmail.

    The negative feedback appears to be coming from people who care
about little else *other* than how the mail system works, and want
to shackle the world to a feature that was already deprecated six
years ago.




    Meanwhile, I'll continue to bop management over the head any
time they suggest that we should refuse to accept mail from "<>",
or require that envelope addresses match the corresponding header
addresses, etc.....

    Folks should consider themselves lucky that I'm here to preach
the sermon on standards around here.  May Ghu help you all when I
get so fed up with all this that I decide to just up and leave.

--
Brad Knowles                                MIME/PGP: [log in to unmask]
    Senior Unix Administrator              <http://www.his.com/~brad/>
<http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE38CCEF1>