84 Mail
However, the really irksome thing about this program is the standard
vacation message format. From the man page:From: [email protected] (Eric Allman)
Subject: I am on vacation
Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: the Vacation program
...Depending on one’s theology and politics, a message might be deliv-
ered by the grace of some god or royal personage—but never by the
grace of Unix. The very concept is an oxymoron.Apple Computer’s Mail Disaster of 1991....................................
In his 1985 USENIX paper, Eric Allman writes that sendmail is phenome-
nally reliabile because any message that is accepted is eventually delivered
to its intended recipient, returned to the original sender, sent to the sys-
tem’s postmaster, sent to the root user, or, in absolute worst case, logged to
a file. Allman then goes on to note that “A major component of reliability
is the concept of responsibility.” He continues: