Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[Mickey Chandler via mailop]

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 5:50 PM yuv via mailop  wrote:

>
> > Not law, documentation. RFC5321 describes the state of SMTP, as of
> > 2008, sorta. How it was working best then, to the degree that the
> > editor and authors could reach consensus. The changes from 2821 to
> > 5321 are clarifications, consolidations, and updates reflecting the
> > evolution of implementations of SMTP in the interim.
>
> Documentation with consequences = law.
>

I think that's kind of the point. The only thing that you get for following
the RFCs is consistency and interoperability. When you step outside of
them, you lose consistency and MAY lose interoperability. If enough people
do so, then the RFC process allows for the process to begin anew with a new
consensus sought. This makes them far more akin to Newton "documenting
gravity" than "a ring of fire."

If you do not agree with how things currently interoperate, the goal needs
to be defining how particulars need to change rather than waving your hands
and saying "The walled garden of RFCs is more hell inside than outside."
This is something that you may assert, but you have neither laid a
foundation nor provided any actual evidence that "Where there is an
alternative, participants are leaving in droves". And, even if they are, so
what?

"The Internet" is built on a series of protocols, each defined by one or
more RFCs. "The Internet" is no more "email" than the World Wide Web (or
USENET or GOPHER for those of us with a shade more seasoning) are "the
Internet." Each protocol has a realm in which it is the best alternative of
the protocols available for selection. And that protocol's RFCs tell an
operator how they may use the protocol in a useful manner where cooperation
and interoperability are required for communication, whether at the Data
Link layer (where machines transmit data) or at the Application layer
(where you find email or web pages). That this is true neither elevates one
protocol above the others nor relegates one protocol to a lesser status.

So, leaving aside the philosophy, what is your endgame here? To get rid of
authentication? To promote the use of open relays (like we had in
mid-1990s)? The cessation of spam filtering?
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Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[yuv via mailop]

Sorry for the late reply, Bill.  Life.  In absence of external
governance factors, I can only self-govern.  I decided to self-govern
toward co-operation rather than confrontation, let's work through the
little misunderstandings.


On Thu, 2021-12-30 at 11:29 -0500, Bill Cole via mailop wrote:
> On 2021-12-29 at 07:40:01 UTC-0500 (Wed, 29 Dec 2021 07:40:01 -0500)
> yuv via mailop 
> is rumored to have said:
> 
> > On Tue, 2021-12-28 at 21:59 -0500, John Levine via mailop wrote:
> > > It appears that yuv via mailop  said:
> > > > The first thing to make internet email viable for the future is
> > > > to
> > > > establish a defensible perimeter and keep bad actors
> > > > out.  Easier
> > > > said
> > > > than done. ...
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.
> > 
> > RFCs-based e-mail is a walled garden.
> 
> You may have missed the fact that "walled garden" is actually an 
> established bit of jargon in an Internet context

Forgive me for using established jargon, I will accept the focus on the
world that started on 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and rephrase my
argument in more precise terms than my previous use of terms
established by a slightly older Western cult [1].


> So, in short: no, it is not.

You are right.  It's not walled, it is surrounded by a Ring of Fire. 
And it is Hell, not a garden.

A wall is a barrier.  It creates two separate spaces: a protected space
on the inside and the remainder outside.  Sometimes, the protected
space is the desirable space and it is called a garden in opposition to
the wilderness outside.  Desirability is a matter of opinion and so is
the use of the term "garden".

You do, elegantly, put up a different kind of walls to protect inside
space [2].

RFCs (or the implementations described within, to use your definition
of what RFCs are) are a barrier to enter the inside and participate in
the system.  Unlike your barriers cited above, the barrieres
implemented and described in RFCs are unintentional barriers, but the
end effect is that the complexity makes the system worse, not better;
and spammers benefits more of that complexity than non-spammers.  But
that is again a matter of opinion: spam is in the eyes of the
recipient.  Always.


> > We lawyers call this the Rule of Law.
> 
> LOL. RFCs are "law." Not in *any* way. RFCs are documentation.

Sir Isaac Newton merely documented gravity [3].


> RFCs are not law. Not ever. Can't improve a "Rule of Law" that has
> no laws and only pragmatic, heuristic rules in the form of
> documentation.

With all due respect, "Rule of Law" is actually an established bit of
political and philosphical thinking [4].  You are mistaking "Rule of
Law" for the collection of statutes imposed on the land by legislators
and enforced by the power of government.  These are artificial rules. 
Some rules are natural, some are artificial.  Artificial rules can be
improved, and RFC (or the underlying, described implementations) are
definitely artificial and definitely can be improved.


> There is no "rule of law" on the Internet because it is defined, 
> designed, and developed as a giant pile of autonomous entities who 
> interact in documented ways developed by experimentation and 
> collaboration. There is no penalty for not working together, beyond
> not working together.

There is no penalty for ignoring the law of universal gravitation,
beyond... oh, wait a minute, why is it so difficult to move to a
different planet, leaving the "90% crap" behind? (you referenced
Sturgeon's Law [5]).  Sometimes, natural penalties are more powerful
than the most powerful penalties that governing entities can mete. 
Governing entities are subject to the Rule of Law like anyone else.  In
fact, the Rule of Law applies to any political setting, including loose
and experimental collaboration.


> Not law, documentation. RFC5321 describes the state of SMTP, as of
> 2008, sorta. How it was working best then, to the degree that the
> editor and authors could reach consensus. The changes from 2821 to
> 5321 are clarifications, consolidations, and updates reflecting the
> evolution of implementations of SMTP in the interim.

Documentation with consequences = law.

To bring it back to Sturgeon's Law: the percentage depends on the
choice of denominator.  Miopically setting the denominator to all
internet emails ignores my reality (and possibly the reality of many
users) that if the denominator includes all electronic transmissions,
internet email is over-represented in the numerator.

The result is the rise of alternative messaging platforms.  The
displacement of mission-critical inter-entities transmissions to other
tools.  It takes just a little bit of courage to jump outside the Ring
of Fire and move away from email-first to prioritize other forms of
electronic communication with less headache.


[1] 

[2] 

Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[Bill Cole via mailop]

On 2021-12-29 at 07:40:01 UTC-0500 (Wed, 29 Dec 2021 07:40:01 -0500)
yuv via mailop 
is rumored to have said:


On Tue, 2021-12-28 at 21:59 -0500, John Levine via mailop wrote:

It appears that yuv via mailop  said:

The first thing to make internet email viable for the future is to
establish a defensible perimeter and keep bad actors out.  Easier
said
than done. ...


Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.


RFCs-based e-mail is a walled garden.


You may have missed the fact that "walled garden" is actually an 
established bit of jargon in an Internet context, gaining use in the 
mid-90's when AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe all "joined" the Internet in 
ways that controlled their users' access to external facilities. 
Facebook is a bit like that today, particularly in places where they 
subsidize access to capture users.


So, in short: no, it is not.


We lawyers call this the Rule of
Law.


LOL. RFCs are "law." Not in *any* way. RFCs are documentation.


The Rule of Law is the worst form of walled gardens except for
all those other forms that have been tried from time to time [1] and
include the single-god ruler or the Cult of the Bitten Fruit.  Does 
not

mean that whe sould not work to improve the Rule of Law.


Whatever...

RFCs are not law. Not ever. Can't improve a "Rule of Law" that has no 
laws and only pragmatic, heuristic rules in the form of documentation.


There is no "rule of law" on the Internet because it is defined, 
designed, and developed as a giant pile of autonomous entities who 
interact in documented ways developed by experimentation and 
collaboration. There is no penalty for not working together, beyond not 
working together.


Not law, documentation. RFC5321 describes the state of SMTP, as of 2008, 
sorta. How it was working best then, to the degree that the editor and 
authors could reach consensus. The changes from 2821 to 5321 are 
clarifications, consolidations, and updates reflecting the evolution of 
implementations of SMTP in the interim.




--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire
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Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[Bill Cole via mailop]

On 2021-12-28 at 21:59:10 UTC-0500 (28 Dec 2021 21:59:10 -0500)
John Levine via mailop 
is rumored to have said:


It appears that yuv via mailop  said:

The first thing to make internet email viable for the future is to
establish a defensible perimeter and keep bad actors out.  Easier 
said

than done. ...


Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.

The short version is that any collection of people large enough to be
interesting is also large enough to have people you don't want to
hear from.


A less charitable variant: Sturgeon's Law applies to any human-generated 
communication medium at a large enough scale. It's not a technical 
problem, it's an empirical feature of reality.


The slightly longer version is whatever criteria you use to decide 
whose

mail to accept is unlikely to match the set of people whose mail you
actually do want to accept, and the more hoops you expect people to
jump through, the more likely it is that people will decide they
weren't all that eager to send you that contract proposal.


Right.

And making it tougher, Internet email was never designed to operate as a 
coherent whole, but as a mechanism that could get messages from anyone 
to anyone else, even those who didn't already know each other, even when 
point-to-point connectivity was not reliable.



--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire
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Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[Dave Crocker via mailop]

On 12/29/2021 4:40 AM, yuv via mailop wrote:

Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.

RFCs-based e-mail is a walled garden.  We lawyers call this the Rule of
Law.



That's very creative.  Not what is normally meant, and not even slightly 
useful.  But very creative.


Well, actually it does have one use.  It makes clear that further 
discussion is not going to be productive.


d/
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Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[yuv via mailop]

On Tue, 2021-12-28 at 21:59 -0500, John Levine via mailop wrote:
> It appears that yuv via mailop  said:
> > The first thing to make internet email viable for the future is to
> > establish a defensible perimeter and keep bad actors out.  Easier
> > said
> > than done. ...
> 
> Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.

RFCs-based e-mail is a walled garden.  We lawyers call this the Rule of
Law.  The Rule of Law is the worst form of walled gardens except for
all those other forms that have been tried from time to time [1] and
include the single-god ruler or the Cult of the Bitten Fruit.  Does not
mean that whe sould not work to improve the Rule of Law.


> The short version is that any collection of people large enough to be
> interesting is also large enough to have people you don't want to
> hear from.

And this is why any society needs policing and walls.  Most likely that
your home has walls, and if you live with significant other(s) you have
common rules.  Your country most likely has prisons -- walls to keep
people you don't want to hear from off the streets -- and borders --
walls to keep other kind of people you don't want to hear from off your
streets.  Walls are a matter of cost/benefit, not a matter of Bad/Good.
Pragma vs Dogma.


> The slightly longer version is whatever criteria you use to decide
> whose mail to accept is unlikely to match the set of people whose
> mail you actually do want to accept, and the more hoops you expect
> people to jump through, the more likely it is that people will decide
> they weren't all that eager to send you that contract proposal.

The general analysis is that two parties decide between themselves what
means of communication to use, and mail has no monopoly on that. 
Sometimes, one party has sufficiently more power to impose the use of a
specific means of communication.  Few parties restrict themselves to a
single means of communication.  In my experience, alternative means of
communications to internet email are gaining traction because the hoops
(cost) of participating in internet email are growing past the pain
point.  I have seen contract proposed and accepted over Twitter.

In popular parlance, the Garden of Eden is the image that comes to mind
when a walled garden is evoked: paradise inside, hell outside, insiders
naked and exposed to the whims of a single capricious ruler.

The walled garden of RFCs is more hell inside than outside.  The
guardians of the walls keep adding layers of complexity with
questionable benefits.  Where there is an alternative, participants are
leaving in droves and eventually the guardians of the walls will find
themselves alone, naked in their own RFCs.  Where there is no
alternative (the telecom's oligopoly on subscriber lines), participants
pay the cost and market forces drive some competition, imperfectly.

[1] <
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/
>
--
Yuval Levy, JD, MBA, CFA
Ontario-licensed lawyer


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Re: [mailop] Walled gardens

[John Levine via mailop]

It appears that yuv via mailop  said:
>The first thing to make internet email viable for the future is to
>establish a defensible perimeter and keep bad actors out.  Easier said
>than done. ...

Unfortunately, e-mail walled gardens are a Well Known Bad Idea.

The short version is that any collection of people large enough to be
interesting is also large enough to have people you don't want to
hear from.

The slightly longer version is whatever criteria you use to decide whose
mail to accept is unlikely to match the set of people whose mail you
actually do want to accept, and the more hoops you expect people to
jump through, the more likely it is that people will decide they
weren't all that eager to send you that contract proposal.

R's,
John
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