🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <89RsVB3w165w@blues.kk.sub.org>, kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kostis) writes:
> ...
> If a system is not capable of storing and forwarding 8-bit octets,
> why is it connected to the Internet? Maybe we should simply not route
> anything over those systems. Old hardware got to be replaced someday
> and should it be only because of the energy it consumes...  ;-)
> ...

This is a persistent cause of the continuing disagreement.

Some modest corners of the Internet are "authoritarian."
Someone or some group tells everyone what they can do.

Other parts are more "democratic" or even "anarchic".  No one can tell
anyone else what to run in those corners.  At most, "peer pressure" can
be invoked against those who do not run "standards compliant" systems.

For now, "standards compliant" means "7-bit."  You might disagree with
the wisdom of either of those facts (that "the net" is not run by a
benovolent European dictator or that 7-bits is or ever was a reasonable
standard).  It is crazy (as is in "refusing to accept reality") to say
that either is not a fact.

SMTP was developed by people were not crazy, who know that some target
machines could at the time only do 7-bit text, and only with some
difficulty.  MIME is being developed by people who are similarly
pragmatic.  MIME will move 8-bit mail through systems that are both
old and 7-bit.

It was probably either provicial or short sighted for SMTP to not have
included some kind of encoding for 8-bit data (although the "S" does
stand for "simple").  It is provincial today to expect the entire
Internet to be changed to support 8-bit text; It is provincial because
it ignores the concerns and constraints of other people.


Vernon Schryver, vjs@sgi.com