3 Feb
2000
3 Feb
'00
11:46 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Rich Lafferty once stated:
That note comes from section 4.3.1, which covers RETURN-PATH. But this
now hinges on what you (or RFC-822) means by ``originator.'' I interpret
that to mean the mailing list software. I (originator #1) send a message to
the list. That in turn accepts the mail, then turns around and then becomes
originator #2 in sending a copy out to the recipients of the list.
On Thu, Feb 03, 2000 at 04:42:45PM -0500, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner
(spc(a)armigeron.com) wrote:
>
> Just in case you missed it last time (from RFC-822, available via
> ftp://nis.nsf.net/documents/rfc/rfc0822.txt , page 22):
>
> 4.4.3. REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO
[ snip ]
That last
sentance allows majordomo to ``munge'' the Reply-To: field. If
you want, I can even send you the RFC in question.
You left out the context of that passage, which describes how the
*originator* can use the Reply-To header. Majordomo is not the
originator of messages sent to the list, it's the sender. RFC 822 also
specifies
Note: The "Reply-To" field is added by the originator and
serves to direct replies, whereas the "Return-Path"
field is used to identify a path back to the origina-
tor. Although I'm starting to wonder if this isn't
symptomatic of a
majordomo bug, or at least a design flaw. It would make sense to me to
configure Majordomo such that the Reply-To points to the list *unless*
the originator added its own Reply-To, in which case it would leave
that there.
To me that sounds reasonable, but that still means you have to be careful
in replying privately to a message send publically without an explicit
Reply-To: added by the original sender.
While trying to figure out why, I came across the
following in the
majordomo FAQ which might be worth considering:
The most important reason why Reply-To: to the list is bad is that it
can cause mail loops if any of the members of your list are running
fairly-common but broken software which doesn't know what an envelope
address is. (Many Microsoft products, as well as many other PC-based
non-SMTP/Internet mail systems which work through an SMTP gateway.)
I don't have any of those systems to find out what they're talking
about, though. Or are they just referring to autoresponders?
You got me there. My experience has only been with Unix based tools.
-spc (The Devil is in the details, eh?)