Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: using Path: for mail replies
Summary: Sorry, I don't plan to eliminate Path lines
Message-ID: 
Date: 21 Aug 88 20:00:03 GMT
References: <676@bacchus.dec.com> <881@vsi1.uucp> <10135@e.ms.uky.edu> <60@minya.uucp> <8528@swan.ulowell.edu> <879@ncrcan.toronto.ncr.com> <63@volition.dec.com>
Organization: Smash-the-State Leather and Lingerie Boutique
Lines: 29

In article <63@volition.dec.com>, vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes:
> "Path:" lines should be changed in the next release of B/C/TMN News, so
> that they don't look so much like UUCP bang-paths.  People get the mistaken
> impression that these are useful ways to get mail back to the sender of
> an article.  In fact, it often works.

I understand the problem you've been discussing, but I have rejected (for now)
the idea of eliminating Path lines as available for reply generation. Doing so
would leave an awful lot of small UUCP-only sites (the ones *not* running
smail) in the lurch.

I think that whole (anti-Path) line of argument reflects a kind of elitism
arising from the fact that most of the mail gurus live at sites with expert
sysadmins that are already in the domainist/Internet world. I think it's too
easy for such people to slip into forgetting the vast majority of small
UUCP-only sites and dismissing their needs and concerns as irrelevant -- but
*I* don't intend to.

I'm still a small site, working one 1200-baud phone line from a desktop. I run
smail but it's easy for me to identify with a lot of people who don't have the
experience, or time, or even spare disk space,  to find a copy, bring it up
and administer it. 

An alternative I am looking into is bundling the smail software with news and
arranging the news autoconfigure/install sequence to also configure and install
smail. Then everybody really could use From: and Reply-To: lines exclusively.-- 
      Eric S. Raymond                     (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
      UUCP: ..!{uunet,att,rutgers!vu-vlsi}!snark!eric  @nets: eric@snark.UUCP
      Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355  Phone:  (215)-296-5718