[Mailman-Users] Gmail "features"

[Lucio Crusca]

Stephen J. Turnbull writes:
> I don't think so.  Perhaps "MUA" is the wrong term for a message store
> "in the cloud", but the fact is that Gmail is the final recipient as
> far as the RFCs are concerned.  Eg, IMAP servers often implement SIEVE
> recipes and spam filtering, so some messages will be lost.

Again, that's not the point and we basically agree gmail is bad, but... a 
standard is some set of commonly accepted rules. Be it written down into a RFC 
or not. The "standard" (expected by most people) behavior of a email final 
recipient software, if not MUA, is to receive emails, not to throw them away 
based on ill advised algorithms. Sieve recipes and spam filtering is something 
that users can disable and modify at will (at least that's the "standard" for 
MUAs). If a recipe or spam filter accidentally trashes a message, the user can 
always disable that recipe or filter. Gmail does break the standard (expected 
behavior) in that does not let users choose if they want to receive some 
messages that are not spam by any stretch of imagination. Imho.

> In any case, no messages are lost; only copies with different
> meta-data.

However some information is actually lost (threading in the user's inbox and 
the acknowledgment that your message has actually reached the mailing list).

> I don't really disagree with you that Gmail's behavior is horrible.
> My point is that if you think its behavior is non-conforming, you may
> be in for other, even less pleasant surprises in the future.

You see, there must be a reason why I decided to roll my own mail server after 
all... I'm prepared to surprises. I'm not a gmail user, though I do have a 
sleeping gmail account. I'd only like to slap gmail in the face if I could, by 
working around their wonderful feature, just for the taste of feeling smarter 
than they pretend to be. All in all, what is hacking about if not that?

> I can't say I have a lot of sympathy.  You get Gmail for free, you
> shouldn't think it comes with no strings attached.

Quite obvious, though I can't see what Gmail earns from that "feature", but I 
suspect it's me not foreseeing very far away.