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

At 17:06 29-08-2008, The IESG wrote:
>The IESG has received a request from the Usenet Article Standard Update
>WG (usefor) to consider the following document:
>
>- 'Netnews Architecture and Protocols '
>    <draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-12.txt> as a Proposed Standard

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.  Section 3.10.1 
(Duties of an Outgoing Gateway) doesn't mention what should be done 
in such a case.  Section 3.6.2 of RFC 2822 mentions that:

   "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?

That could be avoided by encapsulating the message in a new message 
and sending it with Content-Type application/news-transmission.  Such 
messages might show up as attachments in some MUAs though.

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.

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.

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

     original-sender          =   "Original-Sender:" mailbox CRLF

A request to IANA to update the the Permanent Message Header Field 
Repository with the following is required:

    Header field name:  Original-Sender
    Applicable protocol:  Netnews
    Status:  standard
    Author/Change controller:  IETF
    Specification document(s):  This document (section 3.10.2)

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.

Regards,
-sm