On 5/5/2014 1:17 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
It aims to change the behaviour of Internet Mail as deployed.
Whether you want to claim that this is formally extending SMTP, per-se,
or not is really something of a moot point - there is certainly an
intentional, large, effect on the deployed protocol. Arguing whether
this fits the letter of some particular definition smacks of lawyering
to my mind.
If a large market player declared that all mail to and from them were
required to be written in a specific language, would that we a matter
for the IETF to deal with? I think not. (For all I know, some ISP out
there already behaves that way.)
Actions like that are at the level of "politics of use" rather than
"technology of use". While each of us might have opinions for any such
policy, it's not the IETF's job or competence to get enmeshed in such
politics.
However if a large market player took that action and then wrote a
document explaining it and wanted that document published as an
independent stream RFC, I'd think the greater service to the community
would be to publish it. That way the document becomes part of an
important Internet archive.
d/
ps. And there's nothing to prevent others with opposing views from
publishing their own document, explaining the implications and evils of
the actions by the large market player...
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net