🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bw4D7E.Bwz@rice.edu>, schafer@is.rice.edu (Richard Alan Schafer) writes:

> In article <MAIL-L%92101320174177@BITNIC.EDUCOM.EDU>, SXKAC@ALASKA.BITNET (Kurt
> Carlson) writes:
> |> BITnet messages from our system are posted from MAILER@ALASKA
> |> direct to the recipient (not any mailer defined within XMAILER NAMES)
> |> Class=M, Name=sender_userid, Type=Mail, with appropriate
> |> RFC822 headers.

> Why not?  By doing so, you're bypassing the place that those sites have
> said they wish to receive mail.

For me, this is a matter of perception.  We funnel all mail into our
mailer whether it's direct or not.  I did not perceive xmailer names
as sites stating that is where they wish to receive mail... we don't
care whether we receive direct or to our mailer.  If what you say 
is the case, there ought to be a guideline stating that use of the 
defined mailer is prefered.  Maybe there is and I missed it.

> "Should we"?  Absolutely.  Those sites had told the world "We are running
> a post office function, please send mail to us there".  You're ignoring
> their stated wishes, and denying them the ability to handle things like
> mail forwarding that they have setup using their mailer.

We will, although as I state it's not really clear to me that anybody 
has told the world anything.

> "More efficient"?  Perhaps in some way it's more efficient for you to
> generate the mail, but in the long run, the efficiency is certainly not
> to ignore other sites configurations.  The problem that caused you to send
> your note is an example of an "inefficiency" you're causing yourself by
> having something which appears to be a mailer refusing to send to other
> people's mailers.

The efficiency is a local matter.  We have a home brew mailer posting
to bitnet which presently does not load xmailer names.  We also have
a commercial product which is quite capable of being swapped in, it 
does load xmailer names.  Although writing xmailer names into the home
brew is only about a 4 hour job including validation testing, I prefer 
the commercial product as I'm bloody tired of maintaining mailers when 
the rules are vague.  The commercial product is several times less
efficient than the homebrew and this runs on a heavily overloaded 
system.  So, I have a less than optimal choice.
 
> Frankly that question almost comes down to: "Why should I care if the people
> on the other end have trouble reading my mail, if it's harder for me to 
> send it in a fashion that they can read easily?"

This is not a matter of us refusing to send to other people's mailers,
it's a matter of knowing that really is what's prefered. 

> BSMTP packaging is really just icing on the cake, although perhaps at
> the root of your "efficiency" issue.  Although you *should* put BSMTP
> envelopes around your mail if you can, I'd rather have mail be sent to
> my mailer without a BSMTP envelope than have it sent to my userid directly.

My reading is BSMTP is REQUIRED when sent to the mailer.  We will accept
to our mailer without, we will not send to another mailer without.

> For other systems, that
> may not be feasible.  Seems odd to me that if you think your mailer is so
> important that you do this, that you wouldn't believe other sites mailers
> are important enough to send to them, too.

Nothing odd about it.  I assumed other sites were also able to intercept
direct posts and pass them to their mailer (as they are required to 
accept direct posts).  You have corrected my assumption on that.
To avoid people making bad assumptions, it should be a very simple
matter to document someplace what the correct (desired) behaviour is.
  
> To be honest, I don't know if I've ever conceived of a site which ran a 
> mailer refusing to send mail to other sites mailers.  It seems basically
> unsociable, and counter-productive to me.  

Nothing unsociable about it... ignorance on our part to not know others
could not intercept direct posts.  Ignorance on the part of others to
suspect we're doing business to be unsociable, that's not the case.

> Whether there is a CREN
> document which specifically says that, I don't know.  A place to look
> might be the NEWTAGS DESCRIPT document which describes the tags in BITEARN
> NODES which define mailer information, but to be honest, I doubt that 
> it *requires* sites to send to those mailers if their sites has one.

There should, apparanently, be one which recommends it.
Thanks for you comments, we will alter our behaviour (that was the purpose
of my post to find out if we should).  Kurt