Why was mail_bsd(1) changed?

[Vernon Schryver]

In article <1991Jan24.185356.13375 at alias.uucp>, mark at alias.uucp (Mark Andrews) writes:
> As a frequent user of Berkeley mail, I was dismayed to find that you have
> modified the interface. In particular, I am talking about the 'R' and
> 'r' commands. In Berkeley mail, 'R' means reply to the author of the message
> while 'r' means reply to all recipients of the original message.
> 
>However, in your version of Berkeley mail, you have made 'R' and 'r' equivalent
> with 'Ra' or 'ra' replacing 'r'. Why was it changed? I prefer it the way it
> is, and would like it changed back if possible.


Having the "natural" or "default" reply command send to all recipients
would be a serious bug.

In small and large organizations, mail messages with more than one
recepient are usually addressed to a small number of people.  When replying
to a message to a small number of receipents, it is common but not unversal
to want to reply to all other recipeients as well as the originator.  In
medium organizations, multiply addressed email messages are commonly used
for things like "Toyota in parking lot has lights on," "anyone who wants
the extra foobaz outside the lab should speak up," and "if you want to go
to the baby shower/going away party/funeral for Joe, let me know".  In such
an organization that do not have a fixed BSD Mail, you are bombarded with
responses that you were not intended to receive.  The harm these errant
responses cause is far greater than inconvenience of having to use an
uncommon command to respond to all recipients.

There are several common ways in which the "r" commaond in BSD Mail is
changed.  One is to exchange the meanings of "r" and "R".  Another is what
SGI has done.  As I say, this is a very common change.

The SGI Mail command is originally the 4.2 BSD Mail, with many local
changes, and those changes we liked from 4.3BSD.  This particular change
dates from 1986.  I remember the improvement it made in life within SGI.

In these days of high SGI-BSD compatibility, porting the 4.3BSD Mail
from the tape or uunet should be trivial, should you want to change it
back.


Vernon Schryver,  vjs at sgi.com
Disclaimer: I was not a disinterested observer of this change to Mail.