On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 08:08:40AM -0000, D. J. Bernstein wrote: > > By the way, in case anyone thinks that my sarcastic ``7 bits forever!'' > is an exaggeration, here's an old quote from Mark Crispin: ``7-bit MTA's > will never go away. Ever. Mail goes on many paths besides IP, some of > which are forever 7-bits. You will always have to solve the problem of > getting your 8-bit mail into 7-bits for some 7-bit MTA.'' > > It is reasonable to demand time to upgrade, so that there are no > interoperability problems. It is not reasonable to demand that this > 7-bit garbage be allowed to remain on the network forever, at the > expense of all future implementors and users. Why change? It works as designed. If we change this, we risk fragmenting the net. Yes, it costs some more bits when 7-bit downgrading is used, but that is not a general cost for normal email use. And it costs some maintenance and some space in MTAs, but that is not much in total. keld