Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Why MUAs remain broken

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Walther <address@hidden> writes:

    Jonathan> The Ximian coders are under incredible pressure to
    Jonathan> "produce" for the money men backing their company.  So,
    Jonathan> one, they don't have the freedom you would think to
    Jonathan> implement this; they have to prioritize the things their
    Jonathan> backers say are important.

I think you're underestimating both the developers (who have declared
it a bug, and apparently actually have fixed it) and the "money men".
Be that as it may ...

It remains true that the only enforcement power we standards backers
have is screaming "violation!" when we see one.  And to say that a
deficient user interface is no excuse for violating standards, and
that the UI deficiency should be fixed by the app's maintainers.

    Jonathan> The "rest of the world" is mostly standard breakers in
    Jonathan> this regard.

That's simply false.  The violators are a very small group: list
managers who enable munging.  And then of course, _you_ are with them
in spirit, as you _do_ know better but advocate it anyway!

But the MUAs are _not_ violating the RFCs, they are simply providing
deficient UIs.  And the users requesting reply-to munging are
technically advocating violation, but they don't have the privileges
to execute, and don't know the standard.  Not to mention that in many
cases they've been misled by others to think that the violation is the
recommended and/or only solution.  I have to wonder how many of the
users who _say_ they prefer munging would change their mind if
accurate information and decent MUAs were made available to them?

This is one of the points of following standards: most users never
need to know about them because conforming agents just do the right
thing, and cooperate well without the users needing to do a thing.

    Jonathan> The RFC process isn't supposed to come up with existing
    Jonathan> standards; it is supposed to document existing practice,
    Jonathan> and maybe make minor tweaks.

False.  Here's the standard:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt

Documenting best practice is one typical use of the process, but
specifying protocols is another.  Proposed protocols need not be in
widespread use, although the RFC process does demand practical
experience with implementations of the specification.  However
typically widespread use follows, rather than precedes,
standardization of the protocol.


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