Re: [9fans] pop3 before smtp

[Geoff Collyer <geoff@collyer.net>]

Yeah, SMTP is a misnomer.  It makes me wonder how complex MTP was.  I
think a lot of the complexity is due to typical Internet
micromanagement of a baroque syntax.

I designed a replacement, the Really Simple Mail Transfer Protocol,
and did an implementation or two in Limbo.  The spec. is 13 pages,
including index, rather than the 68 pages of RFC 821.  Lucent has had
a patent application in the works for years (4 or 5, I think), so I'm
not sure how much I can say about it, except to point interested
parties at (this is one line):

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=collyer.IN.&OS=IN/collyer&RS=IN/collyer

The description therein is a legalistic version of a lawyer's
understanding of my paper, so it's likely pretty difficult to follow,
alas.

Of course, as I suggest at the end of the RSMTP paper, protocols like
SMTP and RSMTP could be replaced by 9P2000 if it were used more
universally.  (Mount the recipient's synthetic inbox and write to it.
Done.)  The last thing the Internet needs is more protocols, but bad
ones like SMTP ought to be replaced.