Yesterday I described the main features of Newman's proposal on the
qmail mailing list, along with a pointer to the text.
So far, 50 users and system administrators have sent me e-mail stating
``Newman's address system should not be standardized.''
Many of them added unsolicited comments on various details of Newman's
proposal, including
* testimonials to the active use of account names containing "+",
which would no longer receive mail if the MTA were ``upgraded'' to
follow Newman's requirements;
* testimonials to the active use of "-" (and "=") on their machines
by tens of thousands of people and dozens of mailing lists, all of
which would be stranded by an MTA following Newman's requirements;
* testimonials to the active use of PGP with MLMs for security---
security that would be destroyed if the MLMs were ``upgraded'' to
follow Newman's requirements;
* criticism of Newman's enable-subaddresses-by-default requirement
as ignoring the desires of the average user;
* criticism of Newman's ``security considerations'' as violations
of local security policy; and
* evaluations of the difficulty of switching existing subaddresses
to "+" in software, existing mailing lists, and address books
around the world.
Other evaluations of Newman's proposal included ``pointless,''
``silly,'' ``insane,'' ``unneeded,'' ``intrusive,'' ``terrible,''
``go away,'' ``fundamentally flawed,'' ``we don't want it,'' and
``lock MTAs into often undesirable and even foolish behaviors.''
My impression is that many people, like me, would be interested in an
Informational RFC giving an honest description of the AMS subaddressing
system. A proposed ``standard,'' however, is completely unacceptable.
Here are the fifty people:
Ira Abramov, Russ Allbery, Kimmo Arola, Jos Backus, Brian Behlendorf,
Joe Block, David Bruce, Nathan Bryant, Len Budney, Evan Champion,
Frank D. Cringle, Bernard Courtney, Dave Deakin, Gert Doering,
Frank Ederveen, Janos Farkas, Felix Morley Finch, Bert Gijsbers,
Paul Gregg, Andi Gutmans, Dirk Harms-Merbitz, Stephen Hawley,
Douglas Henke, Marco d'Itri, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Dax Kelson,
Martijn Koster, Mark Lillywhite, Patrick J. LoPresti,
Toshinori Maeno, Raul D. Miller, John D. Mitchell, Baldur Norddahl,
John Palkovic, Andrea Paolini, Stephen Parker, Greg Patterson,
William E. Powers, Chris Rovers, Aharon Schkolnik, Matthew Schnierle,
Scott Schwartz, Dave Sill, Steve Simitzis, Rick Smith,
Ethan Torretta, David Wuertele, Vince Vielhaber, Tommi Virtanen,
Ximenes Zalteca.
I'm going to ask politely, for the last time, that Newman withdraw his
proposal.
---Dan
Set up a new mailing list in a single command. http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html