On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, der.hans wrote:

> Am 24. Sep, 2002 schwätzte Tom Achtenberg so:
>
> > I am using Outlook 6.  I haven't a clue what you mean by "RFC compliant".
>
> RFC is short for 'request for comment'. The RFCs are the standards. If
> you're not RFC compliant, you're going against the standard.

Here's a bit more on RFCs:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/

IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force.
They are similar to IEEE, ISO, ITU, ASTM-I and
other international standards bodies.  If it
doesn't follow the RFCs, it is either broken
email, or not email at all.

The most significant RFCs for this conversation
are RFC 822, posted in August 1982, and its
successor RFC 2822, posted in April 2001.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0822.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt

RFCs have been the standards of the Internet
since 1969.