Re: Mail is worse than everything except all the alternatives, was Service outages planned for April 25

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 4/29/22 22:42, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> It will certainly be an unpopular thing to say but I will say it: 
> Protocols wear out over time.
>
> We have patched SMTP again and again and again and at this point there 
> are more patches than protocol and there are holes we simply can't fix 
> because we have reached the limit.

And yet, replacing it is difficult because of the vast number of 
installations, implementations, and mail domains for which service would 
have to be reconfigured, and the disruption of various kinds that would 
likely be caused.  Even if the replacement were far superior and 
suitable for everyone's existing use cases.   Also, replacing it seems 
likely to have the extremely undesirable side-effect of putting email 
even more in the hands of a few Big Companies than it already is.

(I also think I disagree with you about SMTP, but it might be just a 
matter of differences between what we're each lumping into "SMTP")

Keith

p.s. Things have gotten so far out of hand that when I fill out some web 
form and type in my correct email address, the web form often tries to 
correct my input by changing the domain name to that of some 900 pound 
gorilla email service.   Or when you try to send mail and it fails to be 
delivered because of a spam filter, the recipient often tells you to get 
an account with their service provider.