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

Charles Lindsey wrote:
> In <[email protected]> Keith Moore <[email protected]> writes:
> 
>> I think it's rather odd that people are arguing that a proposed 
>> extension to the 822 (i.e. user-to-user) protocol can only be used by 
>> what is arguably mail transport (or on the boundary between transport 
>> and the recipient's user agent).  It certainly doesn't belong in SMTP. 
>> Nor does it belong in a body part, since it's clearly a message-level 
>> function.
> 
> Eh? That header has no meaning whatsoever for RFC 2821 transport. Its only
> possible effects arise _after_ 'final delivery', at which point it is
> sitting in some sort of 'mailbox' (be it IMAP, POP3, or Hector's grand
> archive with alread-existing purging mechanisms). So the feature certainly
> has to be in an RFC 2822 header, if it exists at all.

agreed.

But the idea of a message store wasn't part of the original internet 
mail architecture. So it's not clear to everyone where its 
responsibilities lie.  If the message store is (as I believe) a part of 
the recipient's user agent then it should be neutral with respect to 
storing messages except when given explicit instructions by the recipient.

Unfortunately the market has swallowed the idea that the "network" has 
the right to interfere with traffic between sender and recipient, and 
that furthermore it has the right to do so without any accountability.

Which makes it very hard to build reliable communications systems.

Keith