Re: Comments on Malformed Message BCP draft

Dave CROCKER wrote:

> Receive-side workarounds, rather than rejections of protocol/format 
> violations, seems to be an inherent state of affairs for apps 
> protocols.  No one likes that fact, but no one has come up with a way to 
> change the reality.

Paraphrasing Shaw, telling the truth is the funniest joke in the world.

I would like to suggest a reality which it is closer to:

     Receive-side workaround exceptions

and not the rule of (protocol) thumb.

The reason is because most systems are compliant today, especially 
among actively supported software and when there is an issue raised, 
only good guys complain/report, not the bad guys. Hence most problems 
are generally fixed. The historical reality has been the anonymous bad 
guy exploitation of protocol relaxations which has proven to the cusp 
of the highly expensive mail abuse problem.

What we are really talking about here with workaround exceptions, is 
sender trust, in which case, it is not longer anonymous and the 
protocol relaxations begin to make more sense.   But anonymous abuse 
SHOULD NOT be tolerated and continue to be an excuse to violate 
protocol. There are some strong compliancy parts of protocol which has 
certainly shown a practical reality for a reject first high payoff, 
feasible efficiency to help against anonymous unsolicited abuse.

Of course, as always, the devil is in the details.

-- 
HLS