--On Tuesday, January 4, 2022 14:20 -0500 Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > So on the one hand we have John Klensin asking 'why not do it > in SMTP' and on the other we have John Levine showing why not. Except that is not what I said. You had said that it could not be done in SMTP; I pointed out that everything you had described up to that point could be done (to at least a rough approximation) using SMTP or extensions that SMTP allows. I tried to carefully avoid saying that doing any of it in SMTP would be a good idea, much less optimal, only that it was possible. And John Levine's "why not", particularly the introduction problems and authentication of those were introduced, are not about SMTP. As I read his comments, they would apply to any messaging system that required introduction or individual authorization. I believe that John, Christopher, myself and a few others are saying more or less the same thing: (1) We still do not have a clear explanation of the problem you claim to have solved. "Better than SMTP", "fix holes in SMTP", and comments about Alice's desires are not examples of such an explanation. (2) Several, probably even most, of the approaches you are suggesting look to us (and Keith and others) like things that have been tried before and largely failed, or at least failed to get sufficient traction to make them viable for the long term and at scale. Most of the problems were not technical deficiencies (aka "holes") but human/social issues that made large-scale deployment impractical. At least AFAICT, you have, so far, not provided an analysis of those issues and why your system would not succumb to the same or similar ones. > And again, I am not proposing the objective here is to replace > SMTP, just that I expect SMTP to be collateral damage because > anything that can fix the holes in SMTP will provide a means > to escape from it. See above. Regardless of how any of us might feel about SMTP, I don't see a long line of either users or MSPs clamoring for its replacement and hence ready to switch to a newer and better solution. best, john
