From: <RANDY@MPA15AB.MV.UNISYS.COM>
Date: 05 JAN 96 21:59   
To: <drums%cs.utk.edu@MVDNS1.MV-oc.Unisys.COM>
Subject: Re: "be liberal in what you accept" considered harmful
In-Reply-To: Your message of "5 Jan 1996 18:54:18 -0500"
Message-Id: <EBGX5826346339@MPA15AB>

O2 5 Jan 1996 18:54:18 -0500, John Gardiner Myers <jgm+@CMU.EDU> wrote:

> "Be liberal in what you accept" can actually be a quite harmful
> practice.  It's use papers over problems which otherwise would be
> noticed and fixed.

(John goes on to provide examples of how being "liberal" can be
dangerous, and one where being "conservative" resulted in widespread
broken software being fixed.)

This is a good point, but if someone implements a new mail system
today, and rejects messages that do not conform to the standards, it
will be seen as unable to interoperate.  Wbat's a software developer
to do?

|Randall Gellens             |                    randy@mv.unisys.com|
|(714) 380-6350              | fax (714)597-8053 can add ,,,,,,,,6350|
|Mail Stop MV 237            |                        Net**2 656-6350|
|Opinions are personal;  facts are suspect;   I speak only for myself|

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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is.