On Aug 28, 2011, at 3:59 PM, Hector Santos wrote:
In the 1982, but still currently the official SMTP standard, STD10 (RFC821)
has QUIT as a SHOULD. In the 2000 document RFC2821 and the newer (2009)
RFC5321, it was made into a MUST.
I would like to hear what was the (DRUMS) thinking towards making it a MUST.
I don't remember much of the DRUMS discussion. But it may be helpful to
remember that SMTP is not inherently tied to TCP, and SMTP has been implemented
over X.25, DECnet, and I'm sure some other protocols. An explicit QUIT is
useful in the cases where the underlying transport doesn't have a clean "close"
operation.
Keith