From: Alan Millar <amillar@bolis.SF-Bay.org>
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: TRUNCATED BATCH(es)
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 12:34:33 PST
Organization: The Bolis Group, San Jose, CA

dawson@vdbsan (Willard Dawson) writes:

> amillar@bolis.SF-Bay.org (Alan Millar) writes:
> >(* mounting soapbox *)
   [blah blah blah about RFCs]
> >(* dismount soapbox *)
> 
> Kriste!  Man, the first thing I noted, when I (and it was I who resurrected
> the RFC's in the discussion of whether cr-lf is or is not a bug) brought up
> the thorny issue of RFC-compliance was "I don't know if RFC-822 is the most
> current RFC on this topic."  Please, don't get bent out of shape.  There is
> apparently much confusion as to which RFC supersedes which prior RFC.  Why
> is this so confusing?  It must be inherent in the way in which that info
> is delivered...  In order to make comparisons to college catalogs, one would
> have to have a corresponding RFC catalog.  So far, little has been said of
> SPECIFIC RFC-INDEX references to RFC(s) that obsolete RFC-822.

Well, the index is at every anonymous ftp site with RFCs that I know of.
If you get your RFCs from service@nic.ddn.mil, you can do 

  subject: rfc index

To retrieve the list.  Where do you get your copies of the RFCs from?
Is it missing the index file?  If so, the archive maintainer is messing
up.  In any case, get it from nic.ddn.mil.
 
> To make matters worse, there is this concept that a later RFC can update
> a previous RFC, or only obsolete a portion of a previous RFC.  What a load
> of crap.  It would be much easier to interpret the letter of the law if
> the old RFC's were entirely replaced with new ones.

Every stock offering prospectus I have read says that it is offered
in compliance with the securities act of 1929.  However, I imagine there
has been one or more new laws relating to stocks and securities since 1929...
 
> And, the worst bit of it all is that people insist on saying "the RFC does
> not really say what you think it says.. it really says that MY software is
> compliant, and yours is not."

Yes, that's pretty bad.  Who said that?
 
> So, who is the final, "legal" authority in determining whether a particular
> interpretation of an RFC is the correct one?  And, could we please get that
> body involved in this discussion, quickly?  Before we all waste more key-
> strokes over this (apparently) emotional battle?

Unfortunately, there isn't any single authority.  Internet sites are
responsible for the conformance of any uucp mail it gateways to the 
Internet the standards.  There are no police.  And uucp machines that use 
the Internet standard among themselves are not subject to any restrictions.

As an analogy, it is not illegal to make a touch-tone phone which uses
the wrong frequencies.  Your local phone provider will enforce compliance,
though, and will probably point to the BellCore docs as backup.  But
if a whole bunch of people want to use such phones among themselves,
a la the uucp world, there is no jursidictional body.

And, as we are seeing, not a nice issue...

- Alan

----             email:                                  ,,,,  
Alan Millar       amillar@bolis.SF-Bay.org            __oo  \  
    (Remember: only YOU can prevent bang paths)         =___/  
But Moses said "Oh, Lord, please send someone else to do it." -Exo. 4:13