On 2021-12-29 at 07:40:01 UTC-0500 (Wed, 29 Dec 2021 07:40:01 -0500)
yuv via mailop <post...@sfina.com>
is rumored to have said:
On Tue, 2021-12-28 at 21:59 -0500, John Levine via mailop wrote:
It appears that yuv via mailop <post...@sfina.com> said:
The first thing to make internet email viable for the future is to
establish a defensible perimeter and keep bad actors out. Easier
said
than done. ...
Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.
RFCs-based e-mail is a walled garden.
You may have missed the fact that "walled garden" is actually an
established bit of jargon in an Internet context, gaining use in the
mid-90's when AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe all "joined" the Internet in
ways that controlled their users' access to external facilities.
Facebook is a bit like that today, particularly in places where they
subsidize access to capture users.
So, in short: no, it is not.
We lawyers call this the Rule of
Law.
LOL. RFCs are "law." Not in *any* way. RFCs are documentation.
The Rule of Law is the worst form of walled gardens except for
all those other forms that have been tried from time to time [1] and
include the single-god ruler or the Cult of the Bitten Fruit. Does
not
mean that whe sould not work to improve the Rule of Law.
Whatever...
RFCs are not law. Not ever. Can't improve a "Rule of Law" that has no
laws and only pragmatic, heuristic rules in the form of documentation.
There is no "rule of law" on the Internet because it is defined,
designed, and developed as a giant pile of autonomous entities who
interact in documented ways developed by experimentation and
collaboration. There is no penalty for not working together, beyond not
working together.
Not law, documentation. RFC5321 describes the state of SMTP, as of 2008,
sorta. How it was working best then, to the degree that the editor and
authors could reach consensus. The changes from 2821 to 5321 are
clarifications, consolidations, and updates reflecting the evolution of
implementations of SMTP in the interim.
--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire
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