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From: JOHNSON%nuhub.acs.northeastern.edu@RELAY.CS.NET ("I am only an egg.")
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: vms mail
Message-ID: <8611070952.AA03642@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 6-Nov-86 07:17:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8611070952.AA03642
Posted: Thu Nov  6 07:17:00 1986
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     I had a conversation via the net with one Jon Callas from VMS 
developement about vms mail rumors.  His replies are published here 
with his permission.


Q 1:  What about FORWARDs and distribution lists?

R 1:
        Chris:

        Since I'm the probable source of this rumor, let me squash it.
        Distribution lists will *not* be pulled from V5. It would be
        silly for us to do so.

        Let me explain where I think the rumor came from. In V4, with
        mail forwarding, you could do something like this:

        SET FORWARD XYZ_TEAM "JIM,SUE,BOB,DENISE,BRAD"

        And mail send to FOO::XYZ_TEAM would go to all four people. Most
        of the time. If all mail gets delivered properly, then all four
        people get the mail. But suppose that something goes wrong
        delivering mail to BOB. Suppose he's over disk quota, or he's
        set forwarding to go to another node and that node is down, or
        something. What will happen is that you'll get an error
        delivering mail to BOB, and MAIL won't even try to deliver to
        Denise and Brad. They won't get the mail and you won't know that
        they didn't get it.

        At San Francisco DECUS, someone asked at the Advanced Q&A
        session if this was going to be fixed. I said, "No. As a matter
        of fact, this was an unintended feature, and we're taking it
        away." I explained that the MAIL-11 protocol (which is the
        network protocol that mail uses) is a very simple protocol and
        assumes only one message per transaction (aside -- you can find
        the protocol specification in PROTCOL.TXT in the MAIL section of
        the VMS microfiche). When it gets an error delivering mail to
        XYZ_TEAM it has no way of knowing that XYZ_TEAM fans out to
        multiple users. So it stops sending. This is wrong. It is
        totally unacceptable to not deliver mail. But there's nothing
        that we in VMS can do to unilaterally change the protocol.

        What we are removing from V5 is the ability to SET FORWARD to
        multiple people. If you were using this feature, we're sorry. It
        isn't a feature, it is a bug (bet that's the firt time you've
        heard that line). We're fixing that bug.

        If you need mailing lists (true arpa-style mailing lists -- a
        mail stop that fans out to multiple users, not simply VAX Mail
        distribution lists), then we have layered products that handle
        this problem. Talk to your sales person. Or, you could write
        your own mail server that does this properly. It's been done
        before, and much of the information on how to do it has been
        talked about on Info-VAX.

        I'm sorry that this answer got garbled into a rumor that
        distribution lists are going away. They aren't.

        	Sincerely,
        	Jon Callas
        	VMS development
        	Workstations and Human Interfaces


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Q 2: Will vms mail be enhanced?

R 2:
        Yes, I do happen to know whether VAX Mail is going to be
        improved. It is. Lot's of good stuff. CC, deleting ranges,
        default transport, default print forms, lots of other stuff that
        I don't use, myself. It will also be easier for you to build
        improved mail systems out of ours. Mail will be callable.

        Could you do me a favor and send a message to Info-VAX that
        distribution lists will *not* be going away, but SET FORWARD to
        multiple users will?

        	Thanks,
        	Jon


----------------------------------      ----------------------------------

Chris Johnson
Northeastern Unuiversity