On 14 Jul 1993 23:58:06 GMT Eric Thomas said:
>On Wed, 14 Jul 1993 18:07:08 -0400 "F. Scott Ophof" <[log in to unmask]>
>said:
>>I think you will discover in RFC  822 that "Sender:" is not the formally
>>correct header for this purpose.
>I'm  afraid you  will find  that  most people  disagree with  you here  -
>including  Internet  people.  The  controversy is  about  whether  it  is
>acceptable to have the list name, as opposed to 'owner-listname', in that
>field. But if you  look at the lists managed by the  IETF itself, that is
>where the list name indication is placed.
 
(sigh)  I should have stayed in the BITnet world, ignored the
existance of the whole Internet, and timed myself to kick the
bucket simultaneously with BITnet's demise (hopefully mid 21st
century (or later..)).  :-)
But I would've missed loads of fun stuff, so I'm not complaining.
(Heck, it's not every day one can offer to take and post a digitised
picture to the relevant newsgroup, and have to retract the offer due
to the 1-way-only trip to the HOT nether regions offered in return.)
   >;-)
 
"Sender:" is not meant to function as "post to this addr" (as per
RFC-822).  The fact that there IS a controversy, and that MLMs *do*
differ in what they put in that line is enough for me.
That Revised LISTSERV has used it for years for that purpose, and
consistently provided the user with what comes down to a clean and
neat "point & shoot" solution, and that the IETF lists do too (as
you say), only makes the problem worse.
 
Nobody has yet come up with a definitive alternative, or pointed to
some official document more recent than RFC-822 which defines the
functions of "Sender:" more clearly and concisely.
As far as I'm concerned, I just wish the problem could be solved
easily.  I know that the number of people used to Revised LISTSERV's
use of "Sender:"  is not small (understatement).  I have no idea of
the number of people used to what RFC-822 says the behaviour should
be, nor how many (if any) use it in other ways.
 
I understand that Revised LISTSERV (due to the way it's supported)
would be relatively "easy" to update if some other solution than the
current one were to become official enough to warrant its use.
That's the "bad" side of the great support organization for Revised
LISTSERV.  (grin)
How many people *are* involved with LISTSERV maint/support, btw?
Is a figure of 300 or so instances of Revised LISTSERV about right?
With over 3000 subscribers AVERAGE per instance of Revised LISTSERV?
And no real idea of how many additional subscribers behind firewalls
on local lists?
RiceMAIL however may not be so easy to modify or to get those mods
into the field, not to mention re-educating all those users.
I have no idea how much effort/people would be involved in modifying
and updating the instances of other MLMs, nor of other software
products.
 
Anyway, if it were to come down to a numbers game, then there's only
one that I'm interested in, and that is of the number of PEOPLE
involved in the whole thing.  PEOPLE used to "Sender:" in the
Revised LISTSERV world, PEOPLE used to "Sender:" elsewhere, PEOPLE
who would need to accept a change.
 
 
Regards.
$$\
 
 
PS:  My camera is broken, in case anyone is interested...  >:-)