Date: 2005-06-28 20:37
From: "Thomas J. Hruska" <shinelight(_at_)shininglightpro(_dot_)com>
John C Klensin wrote:
[..]
<snip>
But the notion that the IETF can prevent something from happening or
being deployed by declining to register it,[...]
So...why hasn't the IETF labeled SMTP and POP3, not just a bad idea, but
a terrible one and scrapped (obsoleted, terminated, or whatever you want
to call it) both protocols and come up with something completely new
without a migration path (i.e. the terminated SMTP and POP3 protocols
can't talk to the new protocol and vice versa)?
First, that has nothing to do with the topic of John's message or the
discussion which was taking place.
Second, SMTP and related protocols are core application protocols
used for mission-critical purposes. Backward compatibility is a
key feature so as to avoid disrupting those purposes. So a simple
"light-switch" change -- even if there were something to change to --
would probably be impractical.
While that is some lovely writing, I have yet to see the IETF do
anything constructive in lieu of the spam that plagues the Internet. In
my book, the IETF is to blame for spam, both its existence and its
continuation.
Third, along the lines of your suggestion to scrap SMTP et al, if
you wish to stop receiving spam via email, simply stop receiving
email. Who's preventing you from doing that?
Also, from what I can tell over the past few years of
watching this list, no one in the IETF has the guts nor the spinal
column needed to do anything about it.
Fourth, the IETF is a loose group of volunteers with an indistinct
membership. Anybody can contribute to IETF work; what have you
done lately? (That's a rhetorical question)
It is your job to make new protocols and fix
broken protocols,
"job" and "volunteer" may be incompatible.
and it is the implementor's responsibility to follow
changes without complaint. If you terminate SMTP and POP3 or simply
re-write the core Internet protocols from the ground-up, every
implementation out there MUST follow.
Fifth, compliance with IETF specifications, including full Standards,
is voluntary. There is no IETF police force. There are plenty of
non-conforming implementations.
If the IETF thinks it can do
nothing about spam, then it is already delusional [...]
Spam is a difficult problem. Like "obscene art", nobody wants it,
everybody thinks he knows it when he sees it, few people can agree
whether or not something is it, and nobody has an objective
definition that is practical. As you seem to think it's a simple
problem, please present your Internet-Draft of the solution.
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