Re: Intent to revive "expires" header fromdraft-ietf-mailext-new-fields-15

[Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> yes, it's advisory in theory.  but in practice Expires in netnews means
> "delete the message on or before this date" for very close to 100% of
> the servers out there - precisely because in netnews the assumption is
> that all messages will expire after a relatively short time anyway.

The part after the dash doesn't imply the part before the dash, and I
think you're underestimating the number of servers that ignore Expires or
set minimum expiration times that disable its effect.

> the definitions as stated are very similar, but the definitions have to
> be evaluated within their usage contexts - and the two contexts are very
> different.  basically the two contexts are so different that to use
> Expires in email would likely result in confusing, surprising, and
> undesirable behavior in email.

Okay.  It appears we simply have different opinions after looking at the
same data.  I will just register my complete disagreement with the above
paragraph for the record of the discussion.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>