Re: Changing the default for `send-mail-function'

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    That is certainly possible.  What I was trying to convey is simply this:
    Such systems used to be common, but are far less so now.

I do not disagree with that.

							      A little
    exploration tells me that at least a few tens of thousands of users of
    such systems *to my direct knowledge* have moved entirely away 
    from that model.  At this point, I am aware of more people that no
    longer use such systems than use emacs at all.

I won't dispute your observations, but is the comparison of those two
quantities germane to the issue?

I'm ready to believe that most Emacs users need to use SMTP now if
they are to send mail.  I agree we should make this easy for them.

However, machines with MTAs that work remain an important case, even
if they are no longer the majority, and their users shouldn't find
that Emacs breaks, or asks them questions they don't know how to
answer, merely in order to do what formerly "just worked".

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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