Forgive me if this isn’t as respectful as it could be, but your rather long
dissertation on the problem didn’t actually say what would go wrong if we did
something about it. Is there something missing from the summary I wrote and
sent to the mailing list yesterday?
This is an operational issue, not a philosophical issue. People are trying to
get work done, and a problem created by people other than them is preventing
them from getting work done. Worse, it’s doing it in a way that is difficult
for third parties to detect, and that has resulted in people unexpectedly and
unknowingly not getting email they needed to get.
This is a _really serious problem_. Arguing that we shouldn’t solve it
because we have philosophical issues is silly. It’s like arguing that we
shouldn’t have firewalls, which break IP in exactly the way you described,
because they are bad on a philosophical level. They _are_ bad on a
philosophical level. We, the IETF, are not going to stop people from
installing them, because they are _good_ on an ops level. The idea that we
shouldn’t solve problems like this regarding email went out the window when
Canter and Siegel came on the scene.
That’s just life. So if you have a technical reason why fixing this problem
is a bad idea, please share it. And I am always interested in your
philosophy. But I do not think you have made a valid technical argument
against the IESG addressing this operational problem.