Re: Who should set the Sender: header field?

--On Thursday, December 16, 2021 10:30 +0100 Alessandro Vesely
<[email protected]> wrote:

> On Wed 15/Dec/2021 17:34:15 +0100 John C Klensin wrote:
>> 
>> I am also, fwiw, rather unsympathetic to arguments about what
>> we should do based on the 800 pound gorilla model.  If one
>> accepts the "anything they won't do is DOA", there is no
>> point having standards, or at least any standard rather than
>> "write down what they are doing and just imitate it".
> 
> 
> Back to the subject topic, based on what one of those 800
> pound G. wrote, it turns out that rejecting mail where
> multiple authorship is expressed by multiple From: mailboxes
> was introduced as a requirement to implement RFC 7489.   I
> didn't notice it until a few days ago.

In a way, that is the point I was trying to make. I hope the
revision efforts will sort out at least some of the issues, but,
when a small cluster of large providers can announce that there
is a new way of doing things that they are going to use and to
which everyone else just needs to adjust, there is a problem.
When that new way of doing things will break the multiple From
option, mess up mailing lists (although people are welcome to
use their various group and social network services instead),
create privacy problems because individual replies to group
postings more or less have to go back through the servers of
whomever is maintaining a mailing list, etc., the problem is
magnified.   Well, I hope I'm not the only one who finds that
troubling.

At the same time, if we are going to continue to think about
Internet email in terms of standards, I think we need to push
ahead, try to figure out what The Right Thing is, and do/
specify it. I hope that members of the gorilla family will
participate in that process in good faith and under the
assumption that the results of a collaborative and open process
will, in the long run, be better for the Internet and for them.
One corollary to that is that, in trying to define standards,
"the gorillas are doing it therefore we have to go along" should
probably not carry much weight.

best,
   john




> 
> These days, both RFC 7489 and RFC 5322 are being rewritten.
> Yet, the sentiment of the community who rewrites them seems to
> be that since that feature is seldom used, it is a waste of
> time to consider it.  Such a schizophrenic stance leads to
> inconsistent standards.