‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Friday, August 21, 2020 4:28 PM, Wols Lists <antli...@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
> You're re-inventing the wheel. yes, i do consider re-inventing octagonal wheels. though this wasn't my point here. here, i'm just "asking" to see what makes the "safely stored" guarantee. perhaps i should've asked more directly (and yes, i know these are not new features). > > 1. receipt by final mail server (mandatory). > > > > This is part of SMTP already, in that each server (post office) > acknowledges that the message has been received AND SAFELY STORED. > Without that last guarantee, "receipt by the server" isn't worth > diddley-squat. got any specific definition of what makes a storage "guaranteed"? e.g. what kind of tests does the mail server do in order to say "yup, i can now guarantee this is stored safely!"? > > the job of a relay would be to optionally add some > > metadata (e.g. maybe describing sender's role) and > > sign the whole thing (e.g. by company's private > > key). this way we can have group-level rules. > > Except that SMTP allows for the fact that a message may (or may not) > pass through several post-offices on the way. The old internet thing of > "don't assume any computer will survive a nuclear attack - take whatever > route you can find ..." so there is no guarantee that a relay going in > one direction will even see a message going back in the other. so? not sure how this relates to what i said. i guess you think that i meant that a relay should be mandatory? or maybe i'm misunderstanding your point? (yes, a relay doesn't have to be used. i'm just describing some uses of relays that i think make sense. (1) indicate trust hierarchy, (2) offload mail delivery so that i can close my laptop and let the relay have fun with the retries. not sure there is any other use. anyone?)