Edwin Aoki <aoki(_at_)aol(_dot_)net> wrote:
I believe there are a couple of assumptions that are hidden here and
in similar conversations that have taken place on this and many other
similar lists over the past n years.
We're all guilty of "assumptions". Plural...
1) The fundamental principle behind mail is that it's a communication
between (at least) two entities. Solutions may have costs, barriers,
and benefits that affect senders, receivers, or both. And the costs
and benefits may accrue to different people.
In IETF, we often attempt to deny costs; and we often consider it
out of scope to try to balance costs and benefits...
2) Most end-users rely on their ISPs (or ASPs), Enterprise IT
managers, or educational institutions to manage their mail servers,
DNS, and other infrastructure pieces (I'll refer to these folks
collectively as infrastructure providers). Their choice of mail
client may be driven from above or may be a personal choice.
Users and infrastructure providers have different motivations for
implementing these solutions, and, as above, differences in cost,
conveninence, and desire.
Yes, assumptions, plural...
I don't bring these up in support of or against any specific
proposal, but to remind us of some core principles behind what
we're building. Like the International Email Address (IEA) and
International Domain Name (IDN) efforts, there's a lot of work
involved in moving us from here to there, and the various groups
have very different reasons for wanting or not wanting to get there.
I think this has been proposed before, but for each proposal
(including these kind of discussions), I think it would be very
helpful for folks to articulate which constituent does the work
and which problem it is supposed to solve.
We tend to think, not in terms of constitutents, rather in terms
of functions. Thus we talk of MTAs, not of the entities which
operate them.
Here in mxcomp, we're charged to:
"
" develop a DNS-based mechanism for storing and distributing
" information...
" to specify that individual hosts or nodes are authorized to act
" as MTAs for messages sent from those domains or networks.
You should feel free to ask occasionally for such articulation --
if nothing else we need to discuss whether a proposal is scalable --
but you may not always get an answer...
--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>