On Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:18:19 -0400 (EDT), Sam wrote:
>For once thing, the explicit prohibition against content-based rejection
>of messages. This is probably as far out of touch with reality as you can
>possibly get. According to the draft, if some pissant decides to flood
>your server with spam, or even mailbomb you, there's nothing that you can
>do about it, according to the draft.
I don't see that:
When RFC 822 format is being used, the mail data include the memo
header
items such as Date, Subject, To, Cc, From [MSGFMT]. Server SMTP
systems
SHOULD NOT reject messages based on perceived defects in the RFC 822
or
MIME [RFC-MIME] message header or message body. In particular, they
MUST
NOT reject messages in which the numbers of Resent- fields do not
match or
Resent-to appears without Resent-from and/or Resent-date.
Implementations that adhere to
all "MUST" ("MUST NOT") but not to all of these are considered to be
partially conforming. Such implementations may interoperate properly
with
fully conforming ones and with each other, but this will typically be
the
case only if great care is taken. Consequently, an implementation
should
violate "SHOULD" ("SHOULD NOT") requirements only under exceptional
and
well-understood circumstances.
This just means that you shouldn't reject messages due to precieved
_syntax_ errors in headers/MIME. Also, it is SHOULD not MUST, so there
is room for rejection for whatever reason you want 550 Go away). SHOULD
means that violating this doesn't make you non-compliant (just
partially compliant) and as you say you do this "under exceptional and
well-understood circumstances" and it doesn't break anything.
More arcane, IMHO, is the 8-bit antagonism. I would have expected a
modern draft to specifically allow the full 8-bit charset (barring CRLF
and probably NUL) in header text fields and message.
-Sincerely, Fred
(Frederik Lindberg, Infectious Diseases, WashU, St. Louis, MO, USA)
