On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
The lesson to draw from all this is that if you want to be effective in
propagating a standard you need to write test suites.
I agree, test suite are very important.
(SPF Council - note the above and consider putting it on your agenda)
An SPF test suite would be very nice. It would also effecitvely mean that
control of the test suite was control over the spec.
Not directly control but certainly its a step in that directly.
An email test suite would be even nicer. It would be realy nice if there was
some source that provided a set of tests that could be used to show the
extent to which software complied with a spec and a spec was an accurate
description of what is in use.
A test suite for entire email system? Good luck! (and come back to us in
10 years when you're done :).
We could then draw up a big matrix and work out what the shortest distance
is from where we are to a coherent and consistent set of email specs that do
not do this sort of thing.
I'm all for creating matrices, but I think it would be way too difficult
for entire SMTP set of standards. But I'm not stopping you, so go ahead.
The IETF has done a lot of work on mailing lists, most of it entirely wasted
because there was no advocacy, no follow through.
I agree, IETF has serious problem that it creates standard and does not
follow through to advocate its use.
P.S. I really did not see how one could draw above "lesson" from this
little incident with Paul G. Pierson, but in any case its rare enough
event that I almost entirely egree with PHB.
--
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net