[Mailman-Developers] case-sensitive e-mail addresses

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On 5/2/01 8:05 AM, "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

> I'm afraid I must disagree: that section of 2821 implies that
> 
> John.Doe@example.com
> and
> john.doe@example.com
> 
> *may be separate mailboxes*.  Admittedly, it's a corner case, and very
> unlikely ever to bite us, but doing it that was *does* violate the
> standard.

Sorry, I disagree. "may be" means the standard allows you to consider this
as optional. That's good, because 821 made case sensistivity mandatory (and
the switch shows the clear intent of the standards folks, which is moving to
full case insensitivity, but they must have felt completely removing it was
too big a step -- but they're telling anyone who might still have a case
sensitive mailer it's time to fix it)

In practice, Barry's approach is the best one. The only thing that happens
if you practice case sensitivity on the user part is that users end up with
multiple subscriptions, multiple copies and no clue how to fix it or what's
wrong (and it's your fault, your mailer is screwed up).

The rewrite of the standard makes it clear this kind of situation (John.Doe
and john.doe being different people) is now optional -- and I don't know
that any MLM would work cleanly if it happens (and any admin that allows it
should be shot...)