[Mailman-Developers] [Mailman-Users] Sender field

[Dallas Bethune]

What I have noticed is most of our Outlook users are confused by the  
presence of the word 'bounces' in the From field more than they are  
annoyed at the way Outlook deals with the Sender header.  When they  
see 'bounces' they assume something went wrong.  For our uses just  
changing that list-bounces address to something less ominous looking  
would help.

	Dallas


On Apr 28, 2006, at 9:02 AM, Neal Groothuis wrote:

> It does not appear that Mailman modifies the "Sender:" field to  
> comply with RFC 2822.  The list-bounces address is not the mailbox  
> of the agent responsible for transmitting the message, as required  
> in section 3.6.2.  The mailbox of the agent responsible for the  
> transmission of the message would be the list-owner address.
>
> Mailman's use the "Sender:" field does not seem to be in line with  
> the intent of the RFC, nor with current usage of the field.   The  
> example given in the RFC is of a secretary sending an email on  
> behalf of someone else.  Outlook obviously interprets it this way.   
> Some versions of Thunderbird display both the Sender: and From:  
> lines to the user, which may prove confusing if the Sender: address  
> is not a person or an obvious alias for one.  Gmail uses it if you  
> choose a "From" address that is not your gmail.com address.
>
> Further, if Mailman is going to change the "Sender:" field, it  
> should add Resent-* headers, per section 3.6.6 of RFC 2822;  
> otherwise, the original sender information is lost.  The RFC does  
> say that this is to be used when "users" reintroduce a message into  
> the system, further providing evidence that automated components of  
> the mail routing system shouldn't be changing these.  (Note that  
> MTAs don't change the Sender: field, despite being, by their  
> nature, agents responsible for transmission of messages.)
>
> RFC 2369 provides headers which are to be used by mail list  
> software to identify the various ways of interacting with the list,  
> and Mailman already adds them.  This makes adding this information  
> to the Sender: field redundant.
>
> Based on all of this, Mark's note that there are some MTAs which  
> bounce to the Sender: address is the only reason that I've seen why  
> this behavior should continue.  Does anyone know what MTAs these  
> are, or if they're even still in use?  If these buggy MTAs are  
> common, I would suggest that an option be added to the list to  
> enable this behavior, marked as an accomodation for buggy MTAs, and  
> defaulting to "off".  I'll see if I can scrounge up the time to  
> submit a patch to accomplish this, if it'll actually get included  
> in a future release; otherwise I won't waste my time.  If these  
> MTAs are not in use, I stand by my original recommendation to  
> comment out/remove the two lines responsible for the behavior.
>
> At any rate, the "keep patching" suggestion is unhelpful.   This is  
> obviously a problem that many people are running into, enough that  
> there's a FAQ entry about it.  It should be addressed.
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