[ih] Fwd: Design choices in SMTP

[Steve Crocker]

Well, since I'm mentioned...


On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 4:45 PM Craig Partridge via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> <snip>
> 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).
>
> Craig
>

I moved from UCLA to (D)ARPA in mid 1971.  At that point, most of my
attention was focused on AI and related programs.  I didn't try to actively
manage Arpanet activities, but I did occasionally get involved in meetings,
discussions, etc.  I don't recall the meeting referred to here, but a
couple of points resonate:

   - Email had indeed become important.  It was one of the few applications
   working on the early Arpanet, and it was making a huge difference.  We were
   using it heavily within the Agency, and Steve Lukasik, the DARPA director,
   mandated that each of his direct reports, i.e. the directors of each of the
   Offices, had to use email.

   - Thus, I'm sure that I would have said email mattered.

   - When we first started thinking about email, it seemed to me that it
   could be implemented on top of FTP.  As I said, I don't recall the meeting
   referenced above, but I'm fairly certain that if someone suggested leaving
   email aside I would have responded vigorously.

   - That email was split off later from FTP was fine with me.  That meant
   the community had accumulated enough experience to make a more informed
   design choice.

Steve