Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!bbn!husc6!purdue!decwrl!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: "From:" vs. "From_" Message-ID:Date: 5 Dec 88 10:56:19 GMT References: <1297@ucsd.EDU> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 30 In-reply-to: brian@ucsd.EDU's message of 4 Dec 88 18:44:45 GMT I think we will end up agreeing to disagree. As I understand pacbell's mailer, it is not quite "standard uucp-world-only". They run smail. Smail does the "right" thing according to RFC976, which is: don't mess around with From: lines unless you are acting as a gateway. Since the "From_" line has the information in it, it makes a lot of sense to leave the "From:" line in its original form, hoping that it was modified by the gateway into "your" domain such that if you can get it back to that gateway, the gateway can get it back to the sender on the "other side". Of course, this doesn't mention or deal with "Cc:" or "Reply-To:", but let's not muddy the waters all at once. I can see the reasoning behind your "From:" modification strategy, and I could even argue in favor of it with very little provocation. One thing to keep in mind when thinking about heterogeneous mail networks is that although there are many "wrong" ways to do something, there is no single "right" way. My "right" way is to do for the most part what the RFCs can be read as suggesting, and hoping that any inconvenience I cause by doing so will cause either greater compliance to existing RFCs or new RFCs. Getting my own mail delivered takes precedence over this, of course :-) -- meaning that if breaking an RFC is the _only_ way to get mail to stop bouncing, I grit my teeth and pull out the hacksaw. I prefer to yell at the admins of offensive sites, though, and maximizing my compliance with RFCs tends to strengthen my position when I have to do that. -- Paul Vixie Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600 Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013