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

[Craig Partridge]

Trying here, with some difficulty, to inject a historian's style of
perspective.

I sometimes view X.400 as caught between "second system syndrome" (because
an effective worldwide email system based on RFC 733 formatting and
multiple transports existed [ARPANET+UUCP+CSNET+BITNET]) as X.400 was
starting c. 1981/2 and "plan to throw one away" because X.400 decided to
jump into the multimedia mail space, at a time that people were only just
beginning to develop solutions (e.g. Bob Thomas' group at BBN which
produced something called Slate and the CMU campus program [their version
of MIT's Project Athena] -- and more, I just don't remember them all).

So the project was almost inevitably doomed by a combination of trying to
fix all that was wrong with the first generation and, thanks to the first
generation, being able to see that multimedia was the future, but having
nowhere near enough experience to know how to do it.  Add the usual
international standards/telecomm standards pressures and...

Craig

On Sun, Aug 17, 2025 at 10:11 AM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> > I would have used "unreliable", "unpredictable" and "flimsy"
> as adjectives for X.400.
>
> Amen. 3Com had a contract with a French company to do it for us, which
> earned me a trip to Paris. It never worked right and we finally abandoned
> it.
>
> a poster child for "the perfect is the enemy of the good."
>
> On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 11:48 PM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 17/08/2025 04:13, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> > >     *X.400* for its message handling services. This protocol provides a
> > >     robust "store-and-forward" system for transmitting messages and is
> > known
> > >     for its advanced addressing and security capabilities.
> >
> > For the anedcote, my recollection of X.400 was that it was far from
> > "robust". I would have used "unreliable", "unpredictable" and "flimsy"
> > as adjectives for X.400. In theory, it sounded great, but in practice,
> > its setting up and use was so complex that one small discrepancy and it
> > it wouldn't work properly. IMHO a classic example of wanting to do too
> > much.
> >
> > O.
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