How X.400 could have made email more powerful than SMTP did
By
maguay
The kind of bagel that ruins lesser bagels for you.
Summary
This article explores an alternate history of email where the X.400 standard could have won over SMTP, leading to a more feature-rich email experience. It contrasts the rigid, comprehensive X.400 protocol (which defined what email should be capable of, like message recall, versioning, scheduled delivery, auto-destruction, and threading) with the simpler, pragmatic SMTP approach (which focused on what was necessary to get messages delivered). The article examines how SMTP's minimalism and flexibility ultimately won out, but at the cost of many advanced features that X.400 promised.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledIf the history of email had gone somewhat differently, the last email you sent could have been rescinded or superseded by a newer version when you accidentally wrote the wrong thing.
You would never have needed to type 'as per my previous message.' Instead, you could have linked emails together into a personal Wikipedia of correspondence.
X.400 said what must be possible. SMTP said what must be done.
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