Oh, well, looks as my credibility is at stake...
Well, something is going on here, that's for sure.
> I have consulted technical sources within EUnet about precisely who
> has installed Keld's software and what it does. The information was
> enlightening to say the least.
I have seen (and replied to) one mail addressed to
postmaster(_at_)mcsun(_dot_)EU(_dot_)net; there were no other addresses
in the To: line, nor was there a Cc line. I haven't
heard (yet?) of any other technical source in EUnet
having been consulted.
This gives me a strange feeling, to put it mildly.
> His software is being installed because it provides an 8-bit clean
> SMTP implementation. That is their only interest in it -- as a
> mechanism to transport ISO-8859-X cleanly between their backbone
> sites. (EUnet has mostly a hub and spoke topology within each country
> and one backbone hub site per country.)
EUnet has mostly a hub and spoke topology *as far as
uucp is concerned*; in a uucp context SMTP doesn't
apply; where EUnet sites have IP connectivity, they
mostly talk SMTP directly amongst themselves and to
the outside world. Most EUnet backbones do have IP
connectivity.
I do not beleive that backbone managers have installed it only
for the 8-bit SMTP. Well, anyway it would be interesting to see
how and why they have installed it, I did not help each and every
of them to do it.
But the 8-bit part is of cause important when you are addressing
customers that run 8-bit clean, and then to turn their mails
into RFC-compliant mail. This is what I see as "consenting
adults" agreements, and gatewaying from the sexy 8-bit
sites out in the real world. We have something like 20 sites
in Denmark running their connection to us in 8-bit clean mode.
I have never heard of an EUnet policy of generally doing 8-bit
SMTP, which is what you are indicating? Or even between the backbone
sites. I think you have misunderstood something, Ran. (Or maybe
you have been misinformed).
See further on.
> There apparently is agreement by most of the hub site administrators
> to implement Keld's software ("patches to sendmail/SMTP" to quote one
> note) soon but many have not yet done so. The patches have reportedly
> been made available to Paul Pomes of UIUC for inclusion in the version
> of sendmail that he maintains.
Correct. I stated it that way in my reply.
I have stated earlier (something like half a year ago) that
it is not all of EUnet backbones who have installed the patches.
Correct. EUnet's central backbone site (mcsun.EU.net)
hasn't installed them yet, for a number of reasons.
It *will* happen though, sooner or later.
> There were no statements in support of using Mnemonic for anything.
> All of the comments were about Keld's wonderful 8-bit clean SMTP mods.
Well, that is the same thing. You do not run just 8-bit, but we
run in a mixed 7/8 bit world. But again, I cannot tell how people
have perceived the software. I have never presented my patches
as just an 8-bit clean way of doing SMTP, but clearly stressed the
mnemonics part of it. maybe they do not know the word Mnemonic,
but the codeword in EUnet is keld-char. I did not invent that, but
obviously I am the inventor of it - so that is how they dubbed it.
Right. Installing what we know as "keld-char" is an
agreed-upon strategy for all EUnet backbone sites.
Europe being a multi-national and multi-lingual
continent, there is a clear need here for users
to be able to communicate via e-mail in their own
language. Plain ASCII falls short in many cases.
Piet