[Ilugc] Re: reply to munging
- From: sriram@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (sriram)
- Date: Tue Sep 26 00:02:10 2006
Binand Sethumadhavan <binand@...> writes:
"Mail User Agents" (MUAs or UAs) are normally thought of as the
sources and targets of mail.
In the case of ilugc, I send the email to ilugc <at> ae - the target -
which is mailman, and the emails I get have envelop sender set to
ilugc-bounces <at> ae - the source - which is also mailman.
envelop sender has nothing to do with the source of the mail; the envelop sender
is defined as the address to which bounce messages should be sent. this is how
rfc 2821 says it in 2.3.1 "The SMTP envelope is sent as a series of SMTP
protocol units (described in section 3). It consists of an originator address
(to which error reports should be directed) ... "
now for target, we can stretch your argument to make an MTA into an MUA. in many
mail readers, one can configure how outgoing mail is to be handled. in
particular, one can specify an MTA to which mail should be handed over. does
this make the MTA a target of the mail, then? if yes, then we have just
established that an MTA is an MUA since it is the target of the mail. if no,
then mailing list managers will fall under this category, since it does exactly
what an MTA does in this instance - receives the mail as a temporary target and
then transmits it on to the ultimate target(s). in this sense, a mailing list
manager is never a source or target of the mail. a mailing list subscriber is
the source of the mail and all mailing list subscribers are the targets of the
mail. mailing list managers like mailman are only relay agents and relay is a
role generally associated with MTA's not MUA's.
ok, let me add more fuel to this fire.
we are using mailman for the list. here is a quote from the mailman faq. "The
Mailman developers strongly agree with Chip and Marc, and strongly disagree with
Simon" - chip and marc argue that munging reply-to headers is bad while simon
argues that munging reply-to headers is good. the same faq also states that
"Fundamentally, this problem really should be solved in the MUA" - so, the
developers of mailman (at least the one writing the faq) dont believe mailman is
a MUA.
sriram
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