Xref: utzoo comp.misc:3116 comp.std.misc:38 comp.mail.misc:1171 comp.mail.uucp:1641 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!gorodish!guy From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.std.misc,comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Standardizing Email? Message-ID: <64445@sun.uucp> Date: 16 Aug 88 19:52:49 GMT References: <788@vsi.UUCP> <1380@cloud9.UUCP> <3437@phri.UUCP> <20063@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Sender: news@sun.uucp Lines: 26 > jrmacmillan@watdragon.waterloo.edu writes: > Keep in mind that they don't really have much choice; if they come up > with something and then "you stupid Americans" do it differently, they > are essentially steam-rollered into changing. > > How is that? RFC821 and RFC822 are dated August 1982, which predates > (I believe) X.400. I think the problem here is that Mr. MacMillan completely misunderstood the comment from Andy Freeman: |Does anyone how Europe's bold leap into the 60s a couple of summers |ago came out? (ISO was advertising an experimental mail system |between dissimilar hosts, probably based on an X.400 predecessor. We |stupid Americans had been doing that for years.) Mr. Freeman's comment wasn't that "we stupid Americans" had somehow "steam-rollered" Europe into picking up something that we "did differently". His comment was that "we stupid Americans" had come up with a mail system that worked between dissimilar hosts, long before ISO had ever done so - in fact, the Arpanet supported this *before* the advent of RFC821 and RFC822 - and that *ISO* had "done it differently". The result may well be some "steam-rollering" to get the SMTP users to change, thus somewhat *reversing* the situation Mr. MacMillan appears to be complaining about.