[ih] FTP RIP

[Jack Haverty]

Actually, there were two mail systems in use at MIT on ITS at the
time.   KLH (Ken Harrenstein) wrote COMSAT for MIT-AI; I wrote COMSYS
for MIT-DM.

Both of these had mailing-list functionality.  If you look through those
Header-people archives that Noel has collected, you'll find one message
where I asked whoever was in charge of the MSGGROUP list to add
"MSGGRP at MIT-DM".   That was a list kept on COMSYS that reduced ARPANET
traffic by sending each MSGGROUP message once to MIT-DM, and then
locally to users on MIT-DM.  In networking terms, addresses could be
"multicast" in nature.

We played around a lot with mailing lists, and unearthed some issues. 

For example, replies, redistribution, and forwarding couldn't detect
that addressees were duplicated.   So a reply to a message would go to
the original message's author twice, once directly and once through the
mailing list.   That still happens today - Geoff and Dave should get two
copies of this message.

One especially gnarly problem was how do you detect, and then prevent,
"routing loops" when someone creates a mailing list which inadvertently
contains another mailing list.   This was one of the motivations for
putting the "Message-ID" field in the header standard.   Message systems
could then detect "looping" messages -- if the programmer wrote the
appropriate code.

It's been close to 50 years; I wonder what would happen today if...

/Jack

On 10/1/20 2:31 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow wrote:
> IIRC, ITS with its COMSAT mailer was the first ARPANET host to support
> mailing lists where one could send to
> MailingListName at MIT-{AI,DM,MC,ML} and the COMSAT MTA would then
> "automatically" sent out to others (without any human interaction for
> such memorable lists such as HUMAN-NETS, SF-LOVERS, HEADER-PEOPLE,
> TELECOM, etc.]
>
> TENEX -- which pretty much "ruled" the ARPANET at the time (:D) --
> (never?) had no such capability... mailing lists like Peter Neumann's
> RISKS-FORUM which yours truly setup when at/in SRI-CSL and Einar
> Stefferud's MSGGROUP at USC-ISI collected submissions in a files only
> directory like <RISKS> & <MSGGROUP> to which the list admin/moderator
> would then invoke an UI (like MSG) on to manually forward (or
> "ReDistribute" in HERMES) to the list members -- who were manually
> added or subtracted to a file.
>
> IIRC, this was pretty much the state of affairs until Unix (and MTA's
> such as delivermail, sendmail, MMDF, ...) came along for which
> majordomo was piped to, which then introduced automated list
> management... cue to: Mr. Email aka Dave Crocker.. :D
>
> // geoff
>
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 10:52 AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>
>     Unfortunately, my Dectapes weren't stored very well, and succumbed to
>     decades of summer attic heat and winter below-zero abuse.   They
>     eventually became brittle and crumbled.  The plastic cases were
>     surprisingly robust; the tape itself not so much.
>
>     I also have a request in to MIT for whatever they can find of my
>     ancient
>     ITS work.  I just got back a response that my request has been
>     "closed"
>     with no action, but that "we are working on our procedure for this
>     collection and hope to have it in place soon."
>
>     So I have to now create an account and re-submit my request.  Best to
>     wait a bit for "soon" to pass I guess.
>
>     Yes, there were a lot of mailing lists, as well as a lot of
>     interaction
>     among small groups of people not using any formal list at all.
>
>     If you're a packrat, Lars is the premier Internet Dumpster Diver.  It
>     will be interesting to see those first two archives.
>
>     /Jack
>
>
>     On 10/1/20 11:28 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>     >     > From: Jack Haverty
>     >
>     >     > I lost my own packrat stash when I failed to find a way to
>     move info
>     >     > from Dectapes to a more modern medium.
>     >
>     > Oh, you didn't pitch them, did you? There are a couple of people
>     in the
>     > classic computer community who have working DECTape drives. (I
>     have a TU56
>     > and TC11 controller, but don't have them working yet.) So if you
>     still
>     > have them they could be read. Ditto for RK packs, etc, etc.
>     >
>     >     > the message archives Noel has saved for almost 50 years.
>     >
>     > Err, I didn't save them for the whole 50 years! About 10 years
>     ago, I noticed
>     > that stuff that _used_ to be available on the Web had started to
>     disappear.
>     >
>     > (There was one particular list archive which the person hosting
>     it had taken
>     > down because they had developed an objection to it. I can't
>     remember which
>     > list it was now; it was something from the early
>     commercialization of the
>     > Internet. Maybe something about email?)
>     >
>     > So I went out and scarfed up all the archives I could find for
>     lists which I
>     > remembered as early and important, and which seemed to me to be
>     in danger of
>     > going offline. (As in, hosted by individuals, not institutions.)
>     The Internet
>     > Archive was, IIRC, a big help; I had old URLs for some things
>     which weren't
>     > up anymore, but the IA came through.
>     >
>     > A lot has gone, though, sigh; e.g. the DARPA Internet group had
>     a list, one
>     > whose archives would be invaluable to historians of technology,
>     but I think
>     > they are gone (although if institutions still have backup tapes
>     from that
>     > era, perhaps they could be recovered).
>     >
>     > Speaking of which, Lars has found a copy of the two earliest
>     Hearer-Prople
>     > archives (the ones I'm missing) on ITS backup tapes at the MIT
>     Archives, and
>     > I'll be working on getting them released so they can be put up.
>     Thanks, Lars!
>     >
>     >       Noel
>
>     -- 
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>     Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>     <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>     https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>
>
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
> living as The Truth is True
>
>
>