Dave CROCKER wrote:
Receive-side workarounds, rather than rejections of protocol/format
violations, seems to be an inherent state of affairs for apps
protocols. No one likes that fact, but no one has come up with a way to
change the reality.
Paraphrasing Shaw, telling the truth is the funniest joke in the world.
I would like to suggest a reality which it is closer to:
Receive-side workaround exceptions
and not the rule of (protocol) thumb.
The reason is because most systems are compliant today, especially
among actively supported software and when there is an issue raised,
only good guys complain/report, not the bad guys. Hence most problems
are generally fixed. The historical reality has been the anonymous bad
guy exploitation of protocol relaxations which has proven to the cusp
of the highly expensive mail abuse problem.
What we are really talking about here with workaround exceptions, is
sender trust, in which case, it is not longer anonymous and the
protocol relaxations begin to make more sense. But anonymous abuse
SHOULD NOT be tolerated and continue to be an excuse to violate
protocol. There are some strong compliancy parts of protocol which has
certainly shown a practical reality for a reject first high payoff,
feasible efficiency to help against anonymous unsolicited abuse.
Of course, as always, the devil is in the details.
--
HLS