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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!mgnetp!we53!busch!wucs!wuphys!plus5!hokey
From: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: More thoughts on mail relays
Message-ID: <915@plus5.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 11:40:48 EST
Article-I.D.: plus5.915
Posted: Wed Nov  6 11:40:48 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 06:42:58 EST
References: <1813@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1746@peora.UUCP> <909@plus5.UUCP> <1761@peora.UUCP> <912@plus5.UUCP> <1772@peora.UUCP>
Reply-To: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Organization: Plus Five Computer Services, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 57

Well, you may be in luck.  I am going out of town for a week, so I probably
won't see your followup!

>> Me:
>> Are you saying that there are only a few sites running sendmail?  Are you
>> inviting them to identify themselves in order to substantiate their number?
>
> JER:
>Only if you let all the non-sendmail sites do so too... :-) it's a matter of
>proportion, not numbers.

Did you mean to put the :-) at the end of the sentence?  If not, we should
all begin using Chinese because it will "normalize" communications.  After
all, it is a matter of proportion, not numbers.

>> Contrived example:  wucs!kurt sends me mail via seismo.  Seismo puts the
>> thing into 822 format before sending it to me.  I see wucs!kurt@seismo.
>
>Seismo did it wrong!  (Now, don't get mad, Seismo-folks, I didn't say you'd
>really do it this way...)  They should have written kurt@wucs.UUCP.  It's
>the responsibility of the nameservers on the path back to figure out how
>to get it to wucs.  The fact that it came through Seismo coming here is of
>no interest at all; besides, you can look in the Received: lines if you
>want to know.   The From: line should tell the mailbox name and the system
>the message came from; that's all you know to reply, and all you need to
>know.

I never said *where* the route/address was!  Seismo may have done a perfectly
legal thing and put a domain name (seismo) on a localpart (wucs!kurt).  This
could happen in the To: line, which would be used in a reply.  Let's say I
have a dumb mailer, but seismo doesn't know it.  This is one of the points
I have been making which you don't seem to see.  Furthermore, If I have a
dumb mailer, I *couldn't even reply* to "kurt@wucs.UUCP"!  This is another
of the points I make which you don't seem to see.  The fact that it came
through seismo is *very* significant if I have a dumb mailer and I want
to send something back without editing headers!

>> Since RFC822 compliance can't be enforced on arbitrary UUCP sites, we have to
>> have a way to transport mail between sites.  The *only* thing I am advocating
>> is the use of strict bang format when shuffling mail between UUCP sites.
>
>Me too!  But here again, standard UUCP mail doesn't know anything about
>anything in the message text except for "From_" lines.

Still wrong!  How many times must you be told about the To: line, which is
also used by binmail to handle multiple recipients?  If this line is a "simple"
@ address, dumb mailers can't reply.  If it is a hybrid, dumb mailers will
mess up the wucs!kurt@seismo example I gave above.

My primary goal is to have a reliable, verifyable mail transport system.
If we use strict ! format *within UUCP land* we *will not* have the transport
problems we have now.  Furthermore, it will be *easy* to identify sites which
do not conform to this scheme, making it even easier to track down sites which
can be potential troublemakers.
-- 
Hokey           ..ihnp4!plus5!hokey
		  314-725-9492