Couple that with script
enabled email and the spammers would have a field day basically because we
didn't have the wisdom to keep from giving them a standard mechanism for
authorizing rewriting of content.
If there is ever to be a case of preemptive termination of an effort within
the IETF, OPES is clearly one of them.
Not clear. IETF folks had the wisdom to realize that allowing arbitrary
MIME content to be automatically presented by mail readers was exposing
the users to security risks, and to warn implementors of this fact.
That didn't prevent vendors from irreponsibly exposing their customers
to those risks anyway. IETF advice can be used as an excuse by vendors
who want to do the right thing, but it won't stop those who want to do
the wrong thing.
And it might be that IETF needs to make a statement about unauthorized
modification of content (or that it should have made one a long time ago).
But it doesn't follow that OPES is the best means of doing so.
Keith