[Mailman-Developers] Author_is_list option in upcoming mailman 2.1.16

[Franck Martin]

When a list goes bad, usually the members are not blamed but the list admin, therefore making the list the system responsible of the writing of the message.

Anyhow, it does not matter, this is a religious discussion. Please feel free to code and test your solution of encapsulating the message in a mime rfc822. This seems an interesting and good alternative. I'd like to see it in practice so we can compare data.

On Sep 14, 2013, at 1:27 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

> Franck Martin writes:
> 
>> One may argue that since the list is modifying the message, it is
>> now the new author of it, this proposal just make it more clearly. 
> 
> Nonsense.  Here's what RFC 5322 says:
> 
>   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 list obviously isn't responsible for the writing of the message
> body, and you could argue that in adding header/footer and munging
> attachments and Subject field it's acting as the agent of the author,
> who is therefore responsible for them too.[1]
> 
> If that's not convincing, ask any of your users if they think "the
> list" is an author of their posts, or anybody else's.
> 
> OTOH, if you want to make an authorship claim validly, there's an easy
> way to accomplish it: encapsulate the whole thing in message/rfc822.
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> Footnotes: 
> [1]  Note that RFC 5322's phrasing also clearly refutes the same
> argument when made for "Reply-To".
>