[Mailman-Developers] Reply-To munging considered *carefully*

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Sorry, I didn't have time in my reply earlier to look up the citation
in RFC 5322 (and (nearly?) identical language in RFC 2822).  Here it
is, along with an apology.

Michael B. Trausch writes:
 > On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 12:55 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > > Michael B. Trausch writes:
 > > 
 > > [This was me, stephen, but the attribution was dropped:]
 > 
 > The attribution was _not_ dropped,

Sorry, I must have missed it.  I assure you I went looking for it in
the yanked text.  Apparently I had already cut it, somehow.  My bad,
explanation is not an excuse, only to help assure you it was not an
intentional attack.

 > > Except that it is *not* an ultimate solution, because the function of
 > > the Reply-To field is lost in important cases.  A new Reply-To field
 > > that third parties are prohibited from munging would have to be
 > > defined.  Why do that when we already have one?
 > 
 > Citation, please?  I already quoted the part of RFC 2822 that shows that
 > semantically speaking your assertion is incorrect.

>From RFC 5322 (http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322.txt), sec. 3.6.2:

   The originator fields indicate the mailbox(es) of the source of the
   message.  The "From:" field specifies the author(s) of the message,
   that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible
   for the writing of the message.  The "Sender:" field specifies the
   mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the
   message. [...]

   The originator fields also provide the information required when
   replying to a message.  When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it
   indicates the address(es) to which the author of the message suggests
   that replies be sent.  In the absence of the "Reply-To:" field,
   replies SHOULD by default be sent to the mailbox(es) specified in the
   "From:" field unless otherwise specified by the person composing the
   reply.

   In all cases, the "From:" field SHOULD NOT contain any mailbox that
   does not belong to the author(s) of the message.  See also section
   3.6.3 for more information on forming the destination addresses for a
   reply.

The language in RFC 2822, section 3.6.2 is identical, or very close to
it.  Your interpretation of "originator" as "other end of the last
hop" is specious.  It's reasonable for users like you to delegate the
use of Reply-To to the mailing list, but the mailing list is *not* the
author in the case of discussion lists, and such delegation *must* be
explicit, not assumed by the mailing list manager.

 > If there is an RFC that supersedes the definitions of RFC 2822, I'd
 > like to see it.  At present, I am not aware of one.

This information is generally available in the document rfc-index.txt,
at the same base URL.  For RFC 2822 it reads:

2822 Internet Message Format. P. Resnick, Ed.. April 2001. (Format:
     TXT=110695 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC0822) (Obsoleted by RFC5322) (Updated
     by RFC5335, RFC5336) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

Regards,

Steve