we didn't have an open relay.
I won't argue this, but
<199904040547(_dot_)AAA05080(_at_)astro(_dot_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
indicates
otherwise, and the nature of the ORBS probes essentially required a
message to be relayed. If you say that these facts are not representative
of the truth, so be it.
ORBS did require a single message to be relayed. But if you actually
tried using the server to send spam, you'd find that it would only
relay to a small number of non-local recipients per day - few enough
that it wasn't worth the trouble. It was a stopgap measure that was
intended to keep us from being an aid to spammers and yet to bide time
until we could get users to authenticate their submissions. And it served
its intended purpose. Unfortunately, it didn't keep ORBS from blacklisting
us, and it didn't keep naive/stupid sysadmins from using the ORBS to
prevnet us from sending mail to them, and it didn't keep technically
less astute people who were higher in the local food chain from insisting
that we screw users who were using us as a submit server and prevent
all nonlocal mail relaying.
So perhaps this isn't "force" but it's damn close.
Keith