Revising RFC 2487

Greetings again. It is clear that RFC 2487 needs some change in order to 
make clearer when a server should and should not advertise STARTTLS. (There 
was also a problem with the example in section 6 where I didn't show the 
client EHLO after the TLS negotiation.)

But, I don't hear consensus on this list about what the change should be. 
Here are two proposals; I'm open to others.

(1) Advertise only if ready

Change the text in section 4 to read:

   The STARTTLS keyword is used to tell the SMTP client that the SMTP
   server is currently able to negotiate the use of TLS. It takes no
   parameters.

(2) Advertise if TLS is at all possible

Change the 454 code to:

   454 TLS not available due to temporary TLS processing error

and add the 455 code:

   455 TLS not currently configured or currently misconfigured

Personally, I prefer (1), but I'm not an implementor and am open to 
suggestions.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium