Subject: Re: SMTP WG Last-Call

From: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 20:46:55 +0100 (BST)

On Fri, 21 Jul 2000 09:02:21 -0400 (EDT)
	Dave Sill <[email-masked]> said...

> The question is not whether it should be required or not, the question
> is whether or not servers should be allowed to recognize \012 as a
> line terminator. Nobody is arguing that clients should be allowed to
> send \012 as a line terminator.

Eh? That seems wrong way round to me. If some server chooses to be
liberal in what it accepts, then good luck to it. But if it is not
the case that all servers are required to recognize \012, then indeed
clients MUST NOT send it (if they wish to conform to our standard, that
is - they can have a private arrangement with a partivcular server if
they wish).
> 
> Same thing: `should servers be allowed to *accept* EHLO requests
> containing underscores', not `should clients be allowed to *send*
> them'.

ditto.

> 
> If servers have to Do The Right Thing when the connection dies at a
> certain point, what is gained by outlawing the intentional breaking of 
> the connection?

Keeping their logs clean? Releasing some resources that were being kept 
allocated for the client that was supposedly still connected?
> 
> So the rough consensus of the working group was to lie? It's one thing 
> to encourage MIME, and another to pretend that it's the only way to
> structure bodies.

MIME is the only _recognizes- / _supported_ structure. Perhaps one of
those words could usefully appear at the proper point.

Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     [email-masked]  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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---

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Jul 2000 03:17:34 -0000

Charles Lindsey writes:
> clients MUST NOT send it

That's not the issue.

> If some server chooses to be
> liberal in what it accepts, then good luck to it.

Right---but Klensin doesn't allow this! Read the damn document. Klensin
says that servers ``MUST NOT recognize'' a bare \012 as a terminator for
client requests. That's what I'm objecting to.

  [ EHLO requests containing underscores ]
> ditto.

Once again: The issue is not whether the client is allowed to send this,
but whether the server is allowed to accept it.

Klensin says that servers ``MUST reject'' EHLO names containing
underscores. RFC 821 doesn't say that. Klensin added this requirement
without the consensus of the group.

---Dan