On 6/5/2024 1:48 PM, Grant Taylor via mailop wrote:
I'll argue that SMTP is still simple.
Rather the language (protocol) that is spoken and the grammar (rules)
of how to speak SMTP are simple.
The language (protocol) is entirely separate from what is said using
said language (protocol).
* Email used to be simple. In those days. SMTP was only slightly more
complicated than the simplest possible protocol. (We'd lived with
the simpler capability, with the FTP MAIL command, but the community
wanted something a bit more 'efficient'.)
* Email isn't simple anymore, mostly because of spam and other abuse.
And great capabilities like multi-media.
* The assertion of continued simplicity for SMTP is because it's core
is unchanged, after 40 years. (And for email content, other than
the right-hand side of the address, it's 50 years.)
The lesson of protocols like SMTP is to /start/ simple and permit
enhancement that mostly requires no change to the simple core. Do
something useful and extensible, rather than trying to do 'everything'
all at once. )*_
As protocol architecture design lessons go, that's quite a simple
point. Also one that is quite difficult to learn, if one looks
carefully at some of the protocols developed more recently.
d/
(*) Every 5-10 years, someone claims that SMTP or the email content
format need to be replaced because they are old. My response is that
every time there has been community demand for a change, it's been added
to the existing service. No doubt, at some point, that won't be
possible. But don't demand replacement until /after/ the enhancement
effort has failed. It's happen. It just hasn't, yet.
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker@mastodon.social
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