From: SMTP%"Info-VAX-Request@Mvb.Saic.Com" 2-SEP-1994 09:48:59.82 To: EVERHART CC: Subj: RE: mail programs From: Jerry Leichter X-Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: RE: mail programs Message-ID: <9409021306.AA21288@uu3.psi.com> Date: Fri, 2 Sep 94 08:49:18 EDT Organization: Info-Vax<==>Comp.Os.Vms Gateway X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List Lines: 119 To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com Is there ANY mail program out there that works across platforms WITHOUT using an smtp mailer? Well, MAIL-11 implementations tend to come with all DECnet implementations, and such implementations exist for a fairly wide variety of platforms. The OSI suite defines a mail system, mainly in X.400. Implementations of that exist for a number of systems. However, most X.400 systems actually connect to each other via SMTP-based systems. There are a number of mail systems in the PC world which may use non-SMTP protocols as well; I don't really know. Incidentally, thanks to those who responded to my frustration over three episodes of problems on the mailing list in two weeks. Ray, whoever he is, solved the two list problem some time ago, and I guess I will never know why/how I got delayed postings on two occasions. Perhaps it has something to do with ports to/from the mailing list? One thing still seems clear to me: this mail system that we are using on the internet is certainly not ready for the 'big time.' The world (including me) expects email to be reliable and timely, and problems with mail servers such as mail being spooled up and not delivered on a timely basis is going to be regarded with the same anger and disgust as news of postal workers burning and hiding mail... "SMTP" has nothing to do with this. While the protocol has its problems, the real issues are that (a) there are many very poor implementations out there; (b) there are many systems using one particular piece of code, sendmail, that because of its extremely complex and poor design is essentially certain to be mis-config- ured in any but the most trivial situations (and even in those!); (c) if you want a reliable system, you have to *design* it for reliability. The "mail system" isn't designed - it just kind of grows. Store and forward systems - which most mailing lists are - are particularly vulnerable to problems with the hosts they run on. Since these hosts are doing their work on a volunteer basis, and do not have the provision of reliable service as mailing list hosts anywhere in their goals, it should come as no surprise that they don't achieve it. You aren't paying anyone to make sure your mail actually arrives on time - at best, you are paying someone to provide you with a final "postoffice box" and a path to that box. You are really in no position to complain about what systems you are not paying for do with your mailing list mail. My experience is that professionals tend to learn to deal with things that don't work well without complaint. That is both good and bad; good, because everyone has a less stressful environment. But bad because sometimes one expects the user to put up with things that don't work well without complaint, also. I think it isn't bad now and then to let people know when the system is less than perfect, especially when it is something that someone should be thinking about improving. How ARE we going to have a commercial-grade worldwide mail system. I know there are people thinking about this; probably a number of the readers of this list. Are you willing to pay the required price, instead of relying, as all of use do now, on volunteers? Nevertheless, I attach below a particularly relevent message I recently pulled out of my "best of Unix-haters" collection. -- Jerry Date: Tue, 24 Sep 91 14:15:45 -0700 From: David Chapman To: unix-haters Subject: decay What I find totally incredible is that the general level of systems seems to be lower in almost every respect than it was ten years ago -- the exception being that the machines run ten times faster. (Well, mine doesn't; it's a straight 3600 and thoroughly canine. But everyone else's does.) I maintain a couple of large mailing lists, one of which has a nine-year history. Nine years ago it ran perfectly on ITS, and then for another five years on OZ. Then we moved it to Reagan (a bolix) which really didn't work well, but was tolerable, but got more and more broken. We've left it there, despite lost mail and infinite maintenance aggravation because *we can't find any machine that we have access to that has more reliable mailing list service*. ``We'' here is a group of five mildly famous AI PhDs at five different labs, each among the most famous in the world. I have some friends who work at Xerox PARC. PARC is probably the most prestigious computer science laboratory in the world. It is the place where LANs and printers and email and such were made practical (if not invented). They run Sun unix now, and it is totally broken, and no one can fix it. Their expensive PhD researchers regularly waste *days* trying to get files to come out of a printer or sitting around waiting for NFS to get fixed so their machine will unwedge. It's officially acknowledged both that this is a disaster and that it won't get fixed. Along with the degraded level of systems support has come an extraordinary decrease in access that might let one fix things for one's self. When I was 17, in 1978, I was a ``tourist'' at the MIT AI lab -- in other words, I used their PDP-10 although I had no affiliation whatsoever with the lab. When the system crashed, I would wander into the machine room, figure out what had gone wrong, and toggle the relevant boot sequence into the front panel of this $1e6 mainframe. Here in the future, at most CS labs, you can't get access to the machine room no matter who you are. If the file server goes down at 5:01 Friday afternoon, it stays down until 9:00 Monday when the authorized person comes in. So a lot of famous expensive computer science PhDs, many of them capable of designing the file server in their sleep, grunt in disgust and go home and get nothing done for the weekend. I can't understand how this has been allowed to happen. Besides being fantastically annoying for users, it's fantastically wasteful for companies. I can't understand why the CEO of Xerox doesn't say ``God DAMN it! We are going to have reliable mail service around here, or HEADS ARE GOING TO ROLL!'' I can't understand why people don't just fix things that are broken, the way they used to ten years ago. I just can't figure out how it can have gotten this bad.