Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-usefor-usepro (Netnews Architecture and Protocols) to Proposed Standard

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <6.2.5.6.2.20080906004844.0333aff0@xxxxxxxxxxxx> SM <sm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>Section 3.4 of this I-D states that:

>   "Contrary to [RFC2822], which implies that the mailbox or mailboxes in
>    the From header field should be that of the poster or posters, a
>    poster who does not, for whatever reason, wish to use his own mailbox
>    MAY use any mailbox ending in the top level domain ".invalid"
>    [RFC2606]."

>The use of an invalid email address for the author can be a problem 
>if the message goes through a news-to-mail gateway....

>   "In all cases, the "From:" field SHOULD NOT contain any mailbox that
>    does not belong to the author(s) of the message."

>Should such messages be discarded by a news-to-mail gateway as they 
>are not meaningful in that medium?

The practice of munging From addresses is widespread on Usenet (with or
without the use of 'invalid'), so it isn't going to go away. But anyone
who munges his from address assumes the risk that various agents will
decline to display it; his choice.

I think it is up to the discretion of the gateway administrator. If he
lets it through, some email servers (e.g. those that check From addresses
for existence in the DNS) may drop it. That is the risk the sender took.

So I would leave our wording as it stands.

>In Section 3.5.1:

>   "The proto-article is sent as an email with the addition of any
>    header fields (such as a To header field) required for an email."

>The To header field is not required; the From header is.  I suggest:

>    The proto-article is sent as an email with the addition of any
>    header fields required for an email as defined in RFC2822.

Yes, that is technically better. But what is usual practice here? Do
gateways usually insert "To: list-address@xxxxxxxxxxx"? If so, perhaps we
should advise it.

>Section 3.10.2 recommends the following for an incoming gateway:

>  "If the original message already had a Sender header field, it SHOULD be
>   renamed so that its contents can be preserved."

>The draft doesn't specify to what the header should be renamed.  I 
>suggest creating a new header field for it.

No, there is an established tradition for adding X-headers with obviously
recognisable names (such as X-Orig-Sender) which newsadmins and netkops
can easily recognise, and if we do something special for this header there
are probaly 27 other special headers we should invent for similar
purposes.

>In Section 3.10.3, it is mentioned that:

>  "The news-to-mail gateway adds an X-Gateway header field to all
>   messages it generates."

>It may be better to depreciate the use of X- headers.

No. That particular header needs to be recognised only by the site that
inserted it (in case there is a loop). I think we agreed that people
inventing headers which might reasonably become permanent in some future
standard should avoid the use of X-headers (and, of course, it is now
possible to make a provisional registration of such headers with IANA).
But X-headers are still useful for ad-hoc purposes where there is no
expectation that widely-deployed software has any need to recognise them
automatically.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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