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Re: Understanding response protocols

2004-10-29 11:04:42


----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathaniel Borenstein" <nsb(_at_)guppylake(_dot_)com>
To: "Hector Santos" <winserver(_dot_)support(_at_)winserver(_dot_)com>
Cc: <ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>; "Keith Moore" 
<moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 2:57 PM
Subject: Re: Understanding response protocols



On Oct 20, 2004, at 12:24 AM, Hector Santos wrote:

You continue to show your true colors, odd and evil nature and
character.

?Evil?  Keith is *evil* because he is unwilling to accept a new
interpretation of a standard that has been interpreted another way for
a quarter century?  I would be most grateful if everyone involved could
try to keep this discourse a bit more civil.

Apparently, you have not endured the wrath of his private emails.

Its too bad the IETF needs to get a bad rap because of people like you.

My impression is that the IETF's "bad rap" is predominantly of the form
"IETF is too slow to get the job done."  The primary reason we are slow
is that we are open to a constant influx of newcomers who don't
understand the past,

It would be a mistake to associate the term "newcomer" with not
understanding the past.

who seem to be doing their best to condemn us to
repeat it, and who need to be (slowly) educated on the complexities of
the underlying problems and the existing systems.

I have always work in ways that shows a compromise in progress with the old
and new.   We have products in the market place.  Why would I want to
"break it?"

No, the only reason I began to participate in the IETF last year was to
hopefully be part of the new 'aura of change' that is among us in the
industry, an "aura of change" that has has not happen since the last
revamping of the industry towards the internet were we had to invest
resources to migrate to.  No, we understand the past quite well.  We know
how it fits then and now, and have a pretty good feel if whats needed
today - both ideally and realistically.

In any case, I don't think I said anything wrong about the current issues
with List Servers, Mailing list and how MUA behaves and the possible ideas
that are needed to address some of them.

I can tell you this: I do listen and I take all comments very seriously.

Our Wildct! list server (wcListServe) is designed to fit into and around an
"intranet" model of our "Wildcat! Internet Net Server" and RPC based
CLIENT/SERVER central storage system where the clients are exposes the
server databases to the world.    This means we have to deal with for the
most part with online hosting and offline hosting concepts.

WcListServer used a "reply to list" concept that forced the the "reply-to"
in the distribution.  Never a complaint about this.  Never an report or
comment about "duplicate mails."  However, we knew there was an ergonomic
issue with the MUA not making it easy to reply offlist.

It was an issue that was on the table for a long time.   So when I saw this
thread, I had alot of interest in it.  The issue was mainly what was a
better way to handle the list concept so that the layman user is not
confused.

As a result, we added new options in our recent gamma update to disable the
"reply to list" option and keep whatever reply-to: was there, if any.

I think it was an option that should be there but in a off default setting.

We tested it out for our own support mailing list   Result?

- Direct private mails from members who did not realize they were not
replying to the list.

- and comments that the new behavior is going to KILL our product!  I got
comments list this:

    "See... Already wcListserve no longer operates like a list
     server anymore. =)"

We turned the new option off for our own usage and we are now back to
normal.  Now everyone is happy in our support mailing list:

    "Finally! Hit reply and didn't have to change the TO: address..... =)"

Go figure.

Thanks for your comments

--
Hector Santos, Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com