[ih] Did the MIL-STD matter? [IETF relevance (was Memories of Flag Day?)]

[Dave Crocker]

On 9/5/2023 11:05 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> IIRC, SMTP defined a mechanism for sending bunches-of-bytes between 
> two machines.   RFC822 defined a particular structure and syntax for 
> those bytes.  By not mandating RFC822, DoD left open the possibility 
> of developing other schemes for organizing that content. 

Well, in fact, RFC 821 does mandate RFC 822:

> mail data
>
>        A sequence of ASCII characters of arbitrary length, which conforms
>        to the standard set in the Standard for the Format of ARPA
>        Internet Text Messages (RFC 822  <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc822>  [2  <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc821#ref-2>]).

However this was indirect enough to make it harder to find when 
compiling specs for the 3-volume tome.

And it misses the use of RFC 822 without SMTP.  This was relevant to the 
Internet in terms of (not) facilitating gatewaying with other email 
services.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social