On 19 May 2000, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
> The word ``accept'' in 822bis means that parsers won't die.
Hmm...a secure program should never ``die'' interpreting data (from an
untrusted source). Ergo, any data should be ``accepted''. :)
> No. RFCs are merely one source of information about the Internet, and
> not a particularly accurate source. We implementors decided years ago to
> allow non-MIME 8-bit mail, for example, even though the relevant RFCs
> specifically require that such mail be rejected.
Have you, implementors, done it deliberately (to provide extra
functionality (*)) or incidentally (as a side effect of making
your code simpler)?
(*) If yes, what extra functionality was provided? (Apparently, it was not
an ability to transfer non-English plaintexts because you do not know how
to interpret bytes you receive without MIME (or MIME-like) metadata.)
--Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak [ Boycott Microsoft--http://www.vcnet.com/bms ]
"Resistance is futile. Open your source code and prepare for assimilation."
