On Mon, 2006-08-14 at 23:41 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 14 August 2006 23:32, Felix Miata wrote:
The RFC is deficient in presuming anyone knows the meaning of "author". I really don't care who wrote the content. I only care who sent it to me. The writer of the content did not send it to me, so I really don't care what he wants or what his headers included or not. The listserv sent it to me, so as far as I'm concerned, until a distinction is made in the RFC for list mail, the listserv is the author, not the content writer.
Ah yes, and of course the US Post Office is the author of Time Magazine, right?
A *distribution* list is the official name of what we refer to as "mailing list". It distributes email to people who say they want them (by subscribing to the distribution list). It doesn't author anything, and saying it does is not even debatable, it's just flat out wrong
I think Felix had a point. The US post office isn't the author, but neither is it the publisher. It's [just] a common carrier. Does the RFC recognize the notion of a publisher? Because that's what the list is, IMHO. I think most of the debate on this issue misses the point. That is, IMHO, that the requirements haven't been clearly analysed and consequently the solution isn't especially good! It's clear that a common carrier (ISP etc) is the wrong entity to determine the reply-to address, or anything else. It's equally clear that the author needs to be the ultimate determiner of the reply-to address. The problems come with the in-between cases. Mostly, we'd like the 'publisher' to decide the reply-to address. But are they smart enough to deal with e.g out-of-office replies? Are they smart enough to deflect spam? The fundamental problem, IMHO, is that we need a basic redesign of email delivery/routing mechanisms, including lists. Cheers, Dave