[Ilugc] Re: reply to munging
- From: sriram@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Prof. P. Sriram)
- Date: Wed Sep 27 20:15:11 2006
On Wed, 27 Sep 2006, Binand Sethumadhavan wrote:
(before i argue, i have to caution you that even proponents of 'reply-to
munging is good' may have to admit that it is not pedantically correct but
practically more elegant.)
The way I read that, you are differentiating between "source" and
"originator".
i am not. that is not my argument at all. please read the rfc very
carefully. trying to argue envelope sender is source of mail is a lost
argument - you have to try something else. the ONLY purpose of the
envelope sender is to provide an address to which bounce messages should
be sent (has been so in good old rfc 821 too). that is what the rfc says.
it says nothing about where the mail is coming from or where it goes. it
is equivalent to the 'if undelivered, return to' that is used in snail
mail. it may be the same as the sender but it may not be. it is perfectly
within all rfc's to have mail from fred@xxxxxxx carry ginger@xxxxxxx as
the envelope sender - presumably because ginger knows what to do with the
bounce message better than fred. you are arguing that in this case, ginger
is the source of the mail (and not fred) because thats the name on the
envelope sender. except for having the word 'sender' within it, the
envelope sender may have nothing to do with who is sending the mail.
the only thing this means is that you cant use envelope sender to
associate a source relationship - you have to try something else like
where is the mail actually coming from etc.
Temporary or not, you are confirming what I said - that the MLM is the
target.
and in which case you have just stated that an MTA is an MUA (because it
is a temporary target of mail that may be sent to it for relaying) and
anything that is the target of a mail is an MUA.
This is where we disagree.
[etc etc]
MLMs are MLMs. they do some things like an MUA and some things like an
MTA. thats why they are called MLM and not MTA or MUA. and thats why we
will never agree on whether an MLM is an MUA or an MTA.
MLMs do not relay emails. They accept delivery of emails, process the
emails (unlike "normal" MUAs, they don't display the email on a screen,
but they still are the recipients of the email and hence an MUA), and
re-inject a NEW email message into the queue, with different envelop
sender/recipient addresses.
how 'NEW' is the injected mail? how much of it is verbatim what was
received by the MLM? envelop sender is a lost argument as above - it
has nothing to do with sender or receiver of mail. what about when an MTA
does alias processing? or a primitve 'MLM' that is set up using aliases in
the MTA? the MTA becomes an MLM. of course, one can do this type of
aliasing in an MUA too and make an MUA into a primitve MLM. so an MUA or
an MTA can both play the role of an MLM (to a limited extent). what does
that prove?
--
sriram
Other related posts:
