From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Wed May 18 2005 - 07:40:27 CDT
On Wednesday, May 18, 2005 2:24 AM Hans Aberg wrote:
> The simplest way would be to write the SMTP protocol to require 8-bit
> uses. Then those mail servers still out there which zeroes the 8'th
> bit are no longer SMTP compliant, and must be changed. People have
> now had more than ten years to change their mail server software, so
> it should be not a big problem.
RFC 2821 (which indeed asks servers to support the 8BITMIME extension, using
SHOULD) is "only" 4 year old (RFC 1652 did not require server support.)
Also the renewing of softwares in this area is _very_ slow (why changing
something that just works?)
And some mail administrators are quite angry when you ask them to update
their softwares, but more importantly the vast majority of them quite simply
do not attend your requests (because of the excess of junk mail that is
floating around.)
I guess RFC 2821 did the first step, which was to include the SHOULD. Its
revision will then put MUST (thus requiring effective upgrades), and it
would be the next revision after that which could allow a client (MUA or
MTA) to send 8-bit material without proper workaround if the server is not
able to deal with it... Only then you could say the castrating servers are
eliminated.
Antoine
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