On 12/11/08 9:41 PM, Victor Duchovni at victor.ducho...@morganstanley.com wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:59:41AM +0100, klondike wrote: > >> According to section 4.2.4 on the RFC 282, the SMTP server should return >> 502 only when a command is recognised but not implemented, and 500 if it >> isn't recognised. > > This is not a bug, but it is admittedly an unecessary deviation from > SHOULD normative language in the RFC when the client is in flagrant > violation by sending garbage. At the risk of moving away from Postfix technical issues, RFC 2821 is poorly written. SHOULD, despite much misuse in commonly used English, is the past tense of SHALL. Something that SHALL be done is mandatory yet in common but incorrect use, SHOULD is often used to mean present tense MAY (as in you can do so but it is not mandatory). As a formal document, the RFC ought to say either SHALL (mandatory) or MAY (optional) with SHOULD, being in the past tense, completely incorrect in the context of that paragraph. Unfortunately, given the incorrect use of SHOULD, it is unclear to me what the RFC really means. -- Larry Stone lston...@stonejongleux.com http://www.stonejongleux.com/
