send email from command line

[Derek Broughton]

Rashkae wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Ken McLennan wrote:
>> 
>>> G'day there Derek,
>>>
>>>> No, there shouldn't.  Mail was written by people who believe that mail
>>>> clients _shouldn't_ speak SMTP, and it _must_ have a
>>>> sendmail-compatible program to actually deliver the mail
>> 
>>>     I've no idea about the pros & cons of mtas. Is there a thumbnail
>>> version of the argument somewhere? or can you please explain why someone
>>> would think SMTP should be avoided?
>> 
>> In a word, "No". :-)  I've hashed this over so many times with so many
>> people, without getting a response that makes sense to me.  It's just a
>> Unix meme.  From the point of view of a program like "mailx", outputting
>> a message via SMTP syntax is no different from outputting it to a file -
>> it's all just I/O - but all the MTA developers I've ever corresponded
>> with (quite a few, especially since I hung out on the Exim developers
>> list for a while) swear that it's insane to have a client program need to
>> know SMTP
>> syntax.  I don't see where it makes a difference to have to know SMTP or
>> to have to know _sendmail_ syntax.
> 
> 
> It's insane because it's much more work for the programmer of the mail
> client to program all the extra logic.. the possible error and
> responses, networking stack, etc etc. (As opposed to knowing only one
> sendmail command you need to send the mail, and let sendmail worry about
> sending back/handling any errors)

That makes sense until you realize that instead of having to deal with the
quirks of SMTP, a user agent needs to deal with the quirks of sendmail.  It
still needs to understand the format sendmail needs (essentially the same
as SMTP) and it still needs to understand the responses _sendmail_ returns.

> For the curious, this e-mail is being forward from postfix on my
> desktop, not my ISP smtp, and if you're one of the 5% of the internet
> that can no longer receive e-mails directly from me because of it, I've
> stopped caring.

I haven't - I wish _more_ ISPs would block insecure mail - but they have to
be prepared to prove that their own mail servers are secure.  Why more ISPs
aren't using SPF I don't understand, and my own ISP doesn't understand the
concept of TLS and wanted to charge me more to use it.  
-- 
derek