> When in doubt, grab the RFC and figure it out.

Back in the day, I was using Cloudhopper, a Twitter-developed library for the SMPP protocol (not to be confused with SMTP!). Protocols being protocols, there are strict limits on field sizes, defined on the actual protocol spec. I noticed that Cloudhopper didn't impose those limits, however.

Long story short, it turns out they just left out strictly imposing field limits because other implementations didn't care either. De facto has overruled de jura and the inmates are running the asylum!