Subject: [On Rewriting SMTP and DNS] RE: MARID to close - Comments/Suggestions

From: "Gordon Fecyk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 22:42:02 -0500

> 3) Optional: Rewrite SMTP 2821
> 
> unless the MARID group gets the IETF-SMTP involved,  it will be
> a tough climb to reach the common goals we are all looking for
> success across the board.   We need to recognize that the old
> design philosophy in SMTP 2821, a "relaxed internet spirit
> required for wide deployment with less
> emphasis with security" no longer applies today.

I'm a newcomer to the IETF and I've observed this snobbish attitude right
from the first day I stepped into the the Lotte Hotel in Seoul[1].  That of
the SMTP working group, I mean, and while Hector didn't mention them, the DNS
working group too.

"This fundamentaly changes the semantics of X," was a favorite line
throughout this process.  There are a few in this group who represent this
thought who I will refer to as The Old Guard.

Mitch Kapor, of Lotus 1-2-3 fame and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, made opinions of The Old Guard clear to the author of The Hacker
Crackdown (1992 Bantam Books) during an interview:

"You go tell a hardware hacker that everyone should have a node on the
Internet, and the first thing they'll tell you is: 'IP doesn't scale.' The
answer is: Evolve the protocol!   Get smart people together and figure out
what to do.  Do we add [identification]? Do we add protocol?  Don't just say
'we can't do it.'"

The Old Guard tells us We Can't Do It and then goes to extreme lengths to
prove why.  I say: B***S***.  I'll bet Tim Berners-Lee thought that, and the
result is the World Wide Web.  We have The Old Guard saying that we can't do
X in DNS, we can't do Y in SMTP.

Even though it was done.

We have Bob Atkinson telling me his company's software can't do X in DNS even
though folks here proved him wrong.  And it didn't even require rewriting
DNS.

Earlier proposals worked entirely within existing DNS and SMTP framework,
even if they did change some semantics in SMTP and made some DNS old farts
turn up their noses.  They still worked within the system to the system's
specifications.

Yet they were rejected based on semantics.  Outdated semantics, I might add,
based on an Internet where it was assumed all communication was wanted and
requested.

To Mitch Kapor, "...this is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower
looking down their noses at the people who came over [to the New World] on
the _second boat!_"

By what right do you, The Old Guard, have to look down your noses at folks
like me?  Like Meng?  Like Hadmut?  Like Raymond?  Criticism ("Where's the
debugger?") is one thing, but you went beyond mere criticism to outright
denial.

As for the patent issues, I believe "Chairman Bill" and his pack of
cartooneys can stand a lesson on where they came from.  That goes for you
guys, Harry, Bob, and the others whose names grace certain patent
applications.  You all came on The Second Boat looking down at us coming on
the third, pretending that the Mayflower didn't exist.  Or that the first
boat infringed on your patents.  Or something stupid like that.

[1] During the second English keynote speech which I'll call the "Don't Try
This At Home" speech, the speaker took an unnecessary stab at Microsoft Word
as being a security risk for allowing active content in a document.  I didn't
hear any chuckles from the audience and I'm not surprised - not only was the
presentation B-O-R-I-N-G, it was demeaning, disrespectful to the audience and
disrespectful to "the folks on the second boat" who produced MS Word they way
they did Because Their Customers Asked For It.[2]  I took a moment to try to
bring this to light to the speaker afterward.  I made my first enemy in the
IETF and it was only my first day on site.

[2] Users keep demanding functionality with little or no regard to security.
That's not Microsoft's fault.
<http://www.vmyths.com/rant.cfm?id=376&page=4>

-- 
PGP key (0x0AFA039E): <http://www.pan-am.ca/[email-masked]>
Sometimes it's hard to tell where the game ends and where reality bites,
er, begins. <http://vmyths.com/resource.cfm?id=50&page=1>