Kenneth Porter a écrit : > --On Monday, March 30, 2009 7:52 PM +0100 Rik > <hlug090...@buzzhost.co.uk> wrote: > >> The MAIL RFC's were conceives a long time ago and have had some changes. >> Sure - the mail system is not ideal - however, with no RFC's we would >> end up with closed, stupid proprietary systems that don't talk. >> >> Microsoft Exchange is one reason why RFC's are important :-) > > While standards are useful, broken standards only encourage the > development of closed systems (like Exchange) that aren't beholden to > the status quo and have more freedom to enforce internal consistency. > (Whether that is done is impossible to tell from outside, of course. > Another benefit of standards, unrealized in the mail case, is that one > can tell by inspection if an instantiation of the standardized item > complies.) > > With some other RFCs and other standards, there are reference > implementations that can be used to test the standard itself. For > example, ISC has written reference implementations for DNS and DHCP. > Open Office can be used as a reference implementation for its document > formats. What's the reference implementation for email message formats? > AFAIK there is none. (I'd guess sendmail could be used to test SMTP > compliance?)
do you guys know that designing a protocole is at least as hard as writing code? now, is there still anyone around who does believe in perfect code? protocol design is actually harder: - defining a protocol is easier when you have a single working prototype. once you have hundreds of implementations, life gets hard - email is useful because many people can communicate thanks to the availability of those many non perfect yet working solutions. you can start designing a new protocol. but at one time, you'll face the "upgrade the universe" problem. - while it may have been nice to take spam and other annoyances into the design, the more you put in, the more difficult it is - standards are about consensus. the few we are here often disagree on simple issues. now consider how it is difficult to get the "world" consensus on a standard. if you really think the spam problem is hard because of grammar, you should reconsider your position. if you think authentication, encryption, blahblahtion would solve it, think again. Spam is a social problem, and social problems can't be solved by technical means only. technology des certainly help, to some extent. Laws do help too. Russians killing a spammer helps too;-p ...
