>*> *> I'm a little bit confused about the status of RFC 2821. On the list of *> "Standards" http://www.rfc-editor.org/categories/rfc-standard.html it *> has: *> RFC0821 (STD0010) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (Obsoleted by: RFC2821) *> RFC1869 (STD0010) SMTP Service Extensions (Obsoleted by: RFC2821) *> *> But RFC 2821 isn't a Standard. It's on the list of "Proposed Standards" *> http://www.rfc-editor.org/categories/rfc-proposed.html *> RFC2821 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol *> *> How can a Standard be obsoleted by anything other than another Standard? *>
There is a theoretical answer and a pragmatic one. The theoretical answer is that an implementor today should use RFC 2821 rather than
RFC 821.
The pragmatic observation is that the IETF very seldom carries a protocol specification beyond Proposed Standard. If you look into history, you will find that 821 became a Standard as a "legacy"; it pre-dated the Internet standards process, and never went through the formal progression Proposed Standard -> Draft Standard -> Standard. So 2821 may persist forever, until it is obsoleted by another
Proposed Standard, without progressing. Or, it may be obsoleted by a
progression to Draft Standard.
We hope this is clear.
RFC Editor
So to reiterate RFC2821 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt), section 4.4, Trace Information:
"When the delivery SMTP server makes the 'final delivery' of a message, it inserts a return-path line at the beginning of the mail data. This
use of return-path is required; mail systems MUST support it. The
return-path line preserves the information in the <reverse- path> from
the MAIL command."
So is it clear that the "use of return-path is required; mail systems MUST support it", and since IMail does not, it is RFC-wrong?
--
James Thornton _____________________________________________ Internet Consultant, http://jamesthornton.com
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