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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!strath-cs!jim
From: jim@strath-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: My gawd...
Message-ID: <394@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 18-Feb-87 07:07:07 EST
Article-I.D.: stracs.394
Posted: Wed Feb 18 07:07:07 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Feb-87 07:41:38 EST
References: <1061@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk
Distribution: world
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Scotland.
Lines: 47

In article <1061@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes:
>I've been thinking that there should be some organization that made sure
>sites had decent mailers - so many people violate the most fundamental
>parts of the major RFC's, for various reasons.  Some sites, like
>seismo, rutgers and csnet-relay do it because the admins there say
>"if we were 100% compliant, many sites could not respond, since THEY
>are not RFC compliant."  I say screw the sites that can't comply;
>this is the fastest way to get them to shape up.

Oh, that it were true! What proportion of sites on USENET are stuck with
V7-style mailers that can only cope with UUCP bang-style addresses? They
won't comply with RFC822 and I doubt if many of them could become RFC822
compliant even if they wanted to. [Anybody fancy putting sendmail or MMDF
up on a XENIX box with a 20 Mbyte disk? :-)] 

Forcing the bad sites to "shape up" is a reasonable idea in theory, but
it's somewhat impractical. I dread to think how much stuff ends up in the
postmaster's mailbox at somewhere like seismo. If they started being much
more fussy about mail addresses, could you imagine how much worse that
situation would get? The choice becomes straightforward: stick rigidly to
the protocols and watch megabytes of mail bounce or break the spec. and
keep the mail flowing. If you were a backbone administrator, what would
you do? (Especially if you have to pay the cost of returning failed mail.)
Even if you ignore the cost aspects and the "mail must get through" argument,
violating RFC822 at the likes of seismo and csnet-relay for some mail must
reduce the workload on the admins. there. This can be no bad thing.

USENET relies on co-operation. Unlike networks like CSnet or ARPA, there
is no real central authority to enforce standards and, more importantly,
nobody funding the development of software to comply with these standards.
Without a centrally-directed and funded network administration, it's
unlikely that USENET could make progress in this area.

>Lastly, how about UUCP sites?  No organization can do it, and I don't
>know if any organization would want to.

USENET has no organisation - it's almost total anarchy! :-) The backbone
admins already have enough to do without policing RFC822 conformance in
every piece of mail that they get. Are you volunteering to do this?

		Jim

ARPA:	jim%cs.strath.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa, jim@cs.strath.ac.uk
UUCP:	jim@strath-cs.uucp, ...!seismo!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!jim
JANET:	jim@uk.ac.strath.cs

"JANET domain ordering is swapped around so's there'd be some use for rev(1)!"