Subject: Re: smtpupd-09 prohibits uuencode, cron mail, et al.

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Feb 1999 06:43:59 -0000

John C Klensin writes:
> A significant fraction of the EHLO-based extensions really do assume MIME,

Not in practice. The only real-world effect of declaring 8BITMIME is to
make sendmail treat MIME messages just like non-MIME messages, ignoring
the MIME fields. There aren't any other common MIME-related extensions.

Anyway, the 8BITMIME spec already explicitly says that all 8-bit
messages are MIME messages, never mind current practice. How does it
help for you to declare that all structured messages are MIME messages?
You're simply giving people another reason to throw away your document.

> But I would appreciate recommendations of suggested replacement text,

Frankly, I don't believe you.

Philip Hazel proposed some text in July 1998. You ignored it.

This is hardly an isolated example. The wild world of Internet mail
includes a huge amount of behavior that doesn't fit into your religion.
Forcing you to document that behavior is like pulling teeth.

Exacerbating the situation is your dishonest editorial policy. You
should have started from the previous standards and made only the
changes approved by the group. Instead you've been abusing your power,
making whatever changes you want, shifting a huge time burden onto the
people who _don't_ want those changes.

---Dan