[ih] Fwd: Design choices in SMTP

[Miles Fidelman]

Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 2/7/2023 6:06 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> mail was originally part of FTP
>
> Just realized that this needs a bit of clarification.  Thanks to Ray 
> Tomlinson, networked email originally used the Tenex CPYNET file 
> transfer capability.  He linked it to the Tenex SNDMSG command.
>
> Why this fact is more than a reference to the creation of networked 
> mail and actually covers "original use" is due to the popularity of 
> Tenex around the Arpanet, and the delay until email commands were 
> added to FTP.
>
>  * Ray did his thing at the end of 1971. I don't know the propagation
>    rate it had to the rest of the community, but it was quick. (My
>    involvement in the Arpanet didn't start until Spring of 1972. I
>    can't claim memories about this topic that early.)
>  * RFC 458 (2/73) set the foundation for MAIL and MLFL. It appears to
>    be one of the outputs from a meeting that month about FTP and
>    included discussion of adding email capabilities.  But it was only a
>    discussion piece.
>  * RFC 475 also discusses the topic and introduces the MAIL and MLFL
>    constructs.
>  * Yet the Aug, 1973 FTP revision (RFC 542) still does not include MAIL
>    or MLFL. In fact, it has text that says mail should be a separate
>    protocol, even as it defines a mail Reply code...
>  * The mail commands did not show up in the FTP specification document
>    until 1980 (RFC 765)!  Although they had, of course, been in
>    widespread use long before that.
>
> While I have no memory or documentation of when these commands were 
> deployed in FTP, it's clear that it was not immediately after Ray 
> created networked mail, and yet email was quickly widely used. 
> Offhand, I'd guess the delay for the FTP commands was in the 1-2 year 
> range.  Possibly longer?
>
> Ergo, an original /use/ claim needs to cite CPYNET, not FTP.
>
>
I got to MIT in 1971, immediately got an account on the AI Lab's PDP-10 
(running ITS!), and a few weeks later, Ray sent that famous email 
between two machines at BBN.  Then, he announced it to the community, 
via what was then a regular POSTAL mail distribution - and very shortly 
thereafter, email programs started showing up for different platforms, 
and spread across the community in less than a year - followed by email 
lists, virtual teams & communities, the whole nine yards.  I had the 
privilege of a front-row seat.  I later had the opportunity to work for 
Ken Pogran, who wrote the Multics implementation, and later to have Ray 
kind-a-sorta working for me (I was product manager for BBN/Slate for a 
bit, Terry Crowley was lead developer, Ray was another developer, kind 
of a dotted line relationship.  Great fun, with great people.)

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown