You made my point. Cisco was "justly and publicly" criticized with
"near-universal-derision" for not complying with the standard. Most
companies want to avoid that. False derision is actionable in many
jurisdictions.
--Dean
On Wed, 4 Jun 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 11:54:03 EDT, Dean Anderson said:
>
> > Implementors are not the only users of standards. Businsess seek to
> > purchase and sell "Standard" Services, and may receive just and public
> > criticism for not providing the services they claim to provide. In some
> > jurisdictions, this could conceivably be considered fraud, and/or unfair
> > trade practices. So if a business (SMTP client vendor, SMTP server
> > vendor, ISP, etc) claims to provide "Standard SMTP Service", and comply
> > with the "SMTP Standard", to which RFC should they be held accountable?
>
> Given that the Cisco PIX claimed to have an SMTP implementation from the
> very beginning, and they still sold lots of them, I don't think there's much
> chance of leveraging a lawsuit over the distinction between 821 and 2821.
>
> (For those not familiar with the early PIX software, the best that can be
> said about it is "near-universal derision". Cisco has, to its credit, fixed
> all of the glaring bogosities that I'm aware of, so the current release of
> software *is* at least a "plays well with others" SMTP).
>
