Mark Crispin wrote (in the 822 list, regarding a MIME problem):
As an example, consider that years after the bug in an ancient version of
BSD was fixed, we still have to worry about handling MAIL FROM commands in
SMTP that are missing the host name, or that have colon delimiters in the at-
domain-list instead of commas. This isn't documented in SMTP; rather, it's
in the folklore of how you get your SMTP server to be interoperable...
...
A procedural thought on this: it Sure Would Be Nice if some of the people
who have been exposed to things like this sat down and wrote a few
Informational RFCs *documenting* some of this folklore.
Oh. I get it. Protocol violations are now "folklore".
Where I come from they're called "bugs".
It Sure Would Be Nice if some people called their vendors and yelled at them
when bugs are found. Make someone fix the problem, or buy another product
that works correctly.
Steve Huston Process Software Corporation
huston(_at_)process(_dot_)com 959 Concord Street
+1 508 879 6994 Framingham, MA 01701