[ih] Fwd: Design choices in SMTP

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Craig Partridge wrote in
 <CAHQj4Cedsaw0OrN+d8jHohjxQLrhLPHuC+S81=QT-ATn2W8gdQ at mail.gmail.com>:
 |On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 2:24 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
 |internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
 |> On 2/8/2023 1:02 PM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |>>
 |>> Here RFC 354 (THE FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL) and RFC 385 (COMMENTS ON
 |>> THE FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL) are missing, the latter includes MAIL
 |>> and MLFL.
 |>
 |> Count me as both befuddled and embarrassed.  No idea why/how I missed \
 |> 385.
 |>
 |> I left off 354 because it doesn't provide any email protocol specificati\
 |> on.
 |>
 |> The fact that 385 explicitly specifies MAIL and MLFL makes the fact that
 |> neither are in the RFC 542 version of FTP quite odd..
 |>
 |My recollection, from the digging into this that I did for the article on
 |the history of email for IEEE Annals,  is there
 |was a tension between the FTP and email teams.  There was a meeting about
 |FTP at MIT in March 1973 (that led to 542) where the FTP team
 |had decided to punt on email issues, only to have their DARPA PM (Steve
 |Crocker) show up and tell them that email mattered.
 |After the meeting, the group decided (in some sense, flouting Steve) that
 |email should really be in a separate annex and left email
 |commands out of RFC 542.  (As I recall, they were on a page by Jon Postel
 |in the ARPANET Protocol Handbook but may be misremembering).

I am noting that 542 neither mentions 385 nor 475 at all.
RFC 475 states

   This paper describes my understanding of the results of the Network
   Mail System meeting SRI-ARC on February 23, 1973, and the
   implications for FTP (File Transfer Protocol).  There was general
   agreement at the meeting that network mail function should be within
   FTP.

   FTP currently provides two commands for handling mail.[.]

   [.]Local mail and SNDMSG
   programs have been modified at many sites to include network mailing
   (e.g., USER at HOST at BBN_TENEX and MAIL host user at MIT-DMCG).

And this does not sound to me as if it would have been wishful
thinking, but rather that it was actively being used?

RFC 542 states in "MISCELLANEOUS COMMANDS"

   There are several functions that utilize the services of file
   transfer but go beyond it in scope.  These are the Mail and Remote
   Job Entry functions.  It is suggested that these become auxiliary
   protocols that can assume recognition of file transfer commands on
   the part of the server, i.e., they may depend on the core of FTP
   commands.  The command sets specific to Mail and RJE will be given in
   separate documents.

It also defines response status bits for mail.  My local RFC pool
does not have the necessary bits to do sleuthing.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)