MIME was in significant use quite a bit before ESMTP was operational. In fact it's a non-trivial feature that MIME only requires adoption by author and recipient and not by /any/ of the infrastructure. IE, not by SMTP.
Yes, I know, but I wish you'd read what I've said about 8BITMIME. It's an overlay that makes an INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE TO THE MESSAGE FORMAT, which is a version change in any world I know.
Ditto EAI.
The SMTP extensions to support MIME characteristics are value-added, beyond the basic MIME capability. In other words, they aren't necessary.
Well, sure, neither is DKIM, you could authenticate your mail some other way. I don't understand what point you're making here.
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