On 12/9/07 at 6:07 AM +0100, Frank Ellermann wrote:
I-D.klensin-2821bis 3.9 as before RFC 2821 3.10 state in essence,
that relays, forwarders, and mailing lists have no business to mess
with the header of a mail:
the message header section (RFC2822 [9]) MUST be left unchanged
This appears to be at odds with the mailing list RFCs, adding
various List-* header fields.
I believe this is a bogus complaint on two counts:
1. RFC 2369 and RFC 2919 (the ones that define the List-* fields)
both extend [2]821 in the same way that the MIME documents extend
[2]822. In each case, the former does things that the latter says one
MUST NOT do (e.g., MIME says that it's OK to use other than US-ASCII
characters even though neither 822 nor 2822 allow them). That's
appropriate. Base specifications can be extended by other documents,
and we may update base specifications without taking into account
those extensions.
2. The mailing lists described in 2821 are very simple redistribution
lists, as opposed to the "fairly sophisticated forums for group
communication" [2919] described in these documents. For simple
aliasing and redistribution lists, I think the "MUST be left
unchanged" is appropriate.
It's disturbing if five IETF mail experts offer three strictly
incompatible opinions what mailing lists are supposed to do with an
existing "Sender" header field, or if adding a "Sender" (as it's
common practice) is actually permitted.
Assuming people here on the general IETF list have no idea what
you're talking about here, suffice it to say that the discussion that
occurred on the DKIM list to which you refer is about whether the
aforementioned more complex mailing list should be adding or
modifying the "Sender" field. I think there is not consensus on what
such mailing lists should do, let alone what DKIM should do about
that, which IMO lends more support for the position of 2821bis:
Mucking around with a header section leads to bad consequences, and
until some more work is done in this area to figure out the "correct"
thing to do, one MUST NOT go changing header sections.
pr
--
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102
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