On 5/5/2014 1:17 PM, Dave Cridland wrote: > It aims to change the behaviour of Internet Mail as deployed. > > Whether you want to claim that this is formally extending SMTP, per-se, > or not is really something of a moot point - there is certainly an > intentional, large, effect on the deployed protocol. Arguing whether > this fits the letter of some particular definition smacks of lawyering > to my mind. If a large market player declared that all mail to and from them were required to be written in a specific language, would that we a matter for the IETF to deal with? I think not. (For all I know, some ISP out there already behaves that way.) Actions like that are at the level of "politics of use" rather than "technology of use". While each of us might have opinions for any such policy, it's not the IETF's job or competence to get enmeshed in such politics. However if a large market player took that action and then wrote a document explaining it and wanted that document published as an independent stream RFC, I'd think the greater service to the community would be to publish it. That way the document becomes part of an important Internet archive. d/ ps. And there's nothing to prevent others with opposing views from publishing their own document, explaining the implications and evils of the actions by the large market player... -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net