[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 69, Issue 11

[Dave Crocker]

On 8/16/2025 6:59 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> I was in Lick's group at MIT during that time, and we were 
> implementing electronic mail, so we got involved in the MME. 

My understanding of the MME effort:

 1. ISI had a contract to produce a system to be used in Hawaii for the
    experiment
 2. Apparently ISI didn't make enough progress to please the funding folk.
 3. A competition developed -- with funding for each?  as a competitive
    bid? -- between ISI, BBN (Hermes), and your MIT effort.
 4. ISI won the competition and was fielded.


> "Message-ID:" field

I don't recall the decision to have this field being controversial.  
What it exactly referred to was a different matter.

Given the handling realities of email, there are quite a few potential 
applications for a message ID.  Author creation, vs mail handling system 
origination, vs. each transit hop, for example.

I seem to recall that, much later, the meaning of the Date: field was 
similarly not consistently interpreted and there was a desire to resolve 
this.  I also seem to recall going around and asking various folk -- I 
don't remember my sampling methodology -- what moment they thought it 
referred to.  The very strong consensus was posting time.

I even vaguely recall that X.400 had multiple message IDs, which suited 
their 'toss everything in' philosophy.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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