Re: List postings as attachments

["Hall Stevenson" <hallstevenson@mindspring.com>]

> >> Why do some list postings arrive as attachments? Is
> >> this dependent on the mail client used to read list mail?
> >
> > I suppose you refer to the messages that have a
> > content-type of multipart/signed? This is a standard way
> > of signing a email message as defined by RFC 2015 (in
> > 1996 btw).
>
> The right way has been defined for 6+ years and everybody
> but MS seems to do it.  That means that after about 5 more
> years, Microsoft will impliment a broken, incompatible
version
> of the standard and claim to have invented it.

>From this page, http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfcfaq.html:

========================
Are all RFCs Internet standards documents?

In a word, "NO!".
Many RFCs have Informational or Experimental status and do not
represent any kind of standard. They contain information that
may be useful or important to retain in this archival document
series.

This is important to understand, because unscrupulous
marketeers and a careless trade press sometimes falsely
suggest that every RFC represents a standard, or that all
standards have equal weight. The relationship among Internet
technical specifications is often complex.
========================

This sentence

"This is important to understand, because unscrupulous
marketeers and a careless trade press sometimes falsely
suggest that every RFC represents a standard..."

jumped out at me. :-)

At what point does an "RFC" become a published standard ?? I
see a few standards that reference RFC2015 but didn't read
completely through them.

Regards
Hall