RFC 808 (rfc808) - Page 2 of 8

Summary of computer mail services meeting held at BBN on 10 January 1979

Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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Summary of Computer Mail Services Meeting                   1 March 1982
RFC 808


The Meeting Agenda:

   1.  Present State of Affairs
      .  Survey of Message Systems
      .  Current Problems
      .  Format Protocols - RFC 560, 680, 733
      .  Distribution Service
      .  Documentation
   2.  Future Developments in Message Technology
      .  Multi-Media Techniques
      .  Impact of Personal Computers
      .  Distributed Service
         -  NSW Project
         -  Internetwork Addressing and Forwarding
      .  Other
   3.  Impact of Charging Technology on the Message Service
      .  Protocols
      .  Distribution of Messages
   4.  Managing the Message Service
   5.  Supporting the Message Service

Talks:

   1.  Duane Adams opened the meeting.  He indicated that we should be
   concerned about computer mail as a total message service (not just as
   a local user interface), and asked what impact on the message service
   the developments in internetting and multimedia would have.

   2.  Dave Farber gave a bit of history of mail systems, listing the
   names of all the systems anybody had every heard of (see Appendix A).
   It was noted that most of the mail systems were not formal projects
   (in the sense of explicitly sponsored research), but things that
   "just happened".

   3.  Ted Myer chaired a discussion of current problems in mail
   systems, and the following made comments as well: R. Stallman,
   D. Farber, P. Santos, K. Harrenstien, R. Kunzelman, T. Knight,
   B. Thomas, D. Lebling, J. Haverty, D. Cohen, D. Adams, V. Cerf, and
   A. Vezza.

      This was mostly gripes about what this or that mail system did
      wrong.

         Topics included use of MLFL instead of MAIL, fully qualifying
         the all the usernames with hostnames on all the addresses,
         immediate feedback about the addressed user having a mailbox at
         the destination host or getting an error message later, host



Postel
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