fishtoprecords <pat22043@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wednesday, September 1, 2021 at 4:59:37 PM UTC-4, Rich Alderson wrote:

>> MM came first, initially written by (IIRC) McMahon, later taken over by our
>> late friend Mark Crispin and expanded greatly to allow TCP/IP, DECnet, and
>> dialup e-mail interchange as well as local delivery; I believe that the
>> TCP/IP code replaced the NCP/FTP code of earlier versions.

>> MS was a DEC fork of an early version of MM (I've seen the source, it's
>> acknowledged right there) which standardized on DECnet and local delivery,
>> and did not keep any of the ARPANET stuff; the phone-net stuff was much
>> later anyway.

> We started with DEC's MS and quickly picked up MM. We put in a moderate
> number of local hacks specific to our hacked TOPS-20. We also added "receipt"
> for delivery (meaning that the addressee read the message)

> I remember the address parser that Mark put in. Even supported dial-up UUCP
> I think Mark had a lot of input into RFC822 for proper 10/20 address forms.

It actually wasn't uucp; it was a similar facility which MRC created himself
and called "Cafard" (French for "bug" or "cockroach"; used in soldier's patois
to describe someone who's gone round the bend). I don't know that he saw the
work I had done to add MMDF capability to MM for the University of Chicago, the
project which first acquainted us with each other and led to my move to Stanford.
I think he had a lot of input into both RFC822 and RFC821.

--
Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen