I think this discussion needs to separate at least two distinct issues.
1. Should the IETF elist messages be scanned for viruses?
2. Should the IETF elist restrict the type of content that can be
submitted?
Personally I think it would be a great service to the community to scan
messages for viruses, especially if we are going to continue to allow
content other than text. This is strictly a practical opinion on my
part. It's not hard to do and it would eliminate a lot of wasted
resources. (How much is your time worth?) In fact, I do it for
precisely this reason. I run an elist management service
(www.elistx.com) and I include it as part of my core service. I do it
on x86 machines running Solaris with Sophos (www.sophos.com - excellent
UNIX support in my opinion, they support all the popular varieties). No
big deal, although frequently there are daily updates to the virus
descriptions. Your mileage may vary as far as cost is concerned.
In addition to better managing resources on the server side I consider
it a service to the subscribers. Some people are bound to whatever
their employers do and how they do it. You can bash Microsoft and
Antigen all you want but it won't change the fact that some people just
can not control everything about their environment and if we can do a
little something to help them get more out of their IETF experience how
can that be bad? Especially on this general elist!
As far as restricting the content of messages on the IETF elist to text,
I'm not opposed to it although I won't support it either. The IETF has
always prided itself on being a text-based operation so I can accept the
position as rational. The big win of course is if you do this you don't
need to do virus scanning of the messages.
On the other hand, I think it's a feature to be able to send documents
(even text-based documents) as attachments as opposed to inline and I
further consider it a feature that Internet Draft announcements and RFC
announcements are multipart with functional pointers to the documents.
I realize these latter points are probably more applicable to WG elists
than this general IETF elist, but nonetheless I would consider it
short-sighted of us to explicitly hold back the advancement and
improvement of email (and MIME would be an improvement if more software
did it right), especially when it is our own standard.
I would, however, support the moderation of any message containing
something other than text, especially on this general IETF elist. Of
course that presumes someone is available to be the moderator. Another
policy worth considering that has also been mentioned is trimming those
annoying multipart/alternative with both HTML and text to just text.
Now those are a waste of resources if ever there was one.
Jim