🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <597@cullvax.UUCP>, news@cullvax.UUCP writes :
> Incoming ARPA messages used to come to us with headers saying things like
> 	From: arpa-feed!user@arpa.site
> which worked fine--one could reply to it, etc.  Recently this has
> changed (the "arpa-feed!" part isn't added)
> ....
> It used to work and now it doesn't.  Am I being unreasonable?

Yes, I think you are.  To do what you want properly, your feed site
would have to know the characteristics of every site it feeds (and really,
every site, everywhere) and generate addresses in the form that that
site likes.  That's absurd.  Much better is to have a standard, and
have everyone comply with that.

If that means that some sites have to upgrade their software, then
that's just the way it is.  Reconcile yourself to this.

Robert Elz			postmaster@munnari.oz

In article <1353@munnari.oz> kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes:
>In article <597@cullvax.UUCP>, news@cullvax.UUCP writes :
>> Incoming ARPA messages used to come to us with headers saying things like
>> 	From: arpa-feed!user@arpa.site
>> which worked fine--one could reply to it, etc.  Recently this has
>> changed (the "arpa-feed!" part isn't added)
>> ....
>> It used to work and now it doesn't.  Am I being unreasonable?
>
>Yes, I think you are.  To do what you want properly, your feed site
>would have to know the characteristics of every site it feeds (and really,
>every site, everywhere) and generate addresses in the form that that
>site likes.  That's absurd.  Much better is to have a standard, and
>have everyone comply with that.
>
>If that means that some sites have to upgrade their software, then
>that's just the way it is.  Reconcile yourself to this.
>
>Robert Elz			postmaster@munnari.oz

While all that you claim may indeed be reasonable to you, please note 
that many of us do not have the option of implementing a mailer that is
not supported by the equipment or software vendor.  Even for those of us
who do have access to sources and/or considerable support talent, there is
considerable time and effort involved in converting from one standard to
another.  It is also the case that the learning curve is often flatter than
we would wish.  

For the most part, the news system has provided transition tools wherever
possible and I have considerable admiration for the manner in which updates
and improvements have been handled.  On the other hand, for a postmaster to
tell a client that he should refer to Figure 1. seems to be out of character
for the net in general and the postmaster function in particular.  I would
think that the postmaster would want to get the problem fixed as promptly as
possible.  It isn't so much that he should serve the client as it is that 
the problem is likely consume his time anyway.

John Cornelius
(...!sdcsvax!piaget!jc)

In article <112@piaget.UUCP> jc@piaget.UUCP (John Cornelius, System Guru) writes:
>While all that you claim may indeed be reasonable to you, please note 
>that many of us do not have the option of implementing a mailer that is
>not supported by the equipment or software vendor.  Even for those of us
>who do have access to sources and/or considerable support talent, there is
>considerable time and effort involved in converting from one standard to
>another.  It is also the case that the learning curve is often flatter than
>we would wish.  ...

As Fred Avolio pointed out, the solution is readily available.  The "smail"
package, recently posted to mod.sources, is an upward-compatible uucp mailer
replacement that does All The Right Things.  I don't think it's too much
to ask a system administrator to install a free, working, easily available
software package, when doing so helps bring us a tiny step closer to
standardization in an area that sorely needs it.  (Not to mention that
the routing function smail provides is so big an improvement over vanilla
uucp you'll wonder how you ever lived without it...)
-- 
Larry Campbell				     The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Internet: campbell@maynard.bsw.com	    120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
uucp: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell  	    +1 617 367 6846
ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvisr.harvard.edu      MCI: LCAMPBELL

Re: discussion of what should be in From: lines

The discussion has centered around UUCP mail (since that was the original
question). Another aspect of this question is what to do about domain
addresses in Internet mail that are only reachable by sites using MX records
from the domain servers.

There are over 12,000 machines in the DEC.COM domain. They all have MX
records in the DEC.COM domain servers, but most of them do not have Internet
addresses and cannot be reached by Internet sites whose software is not up
to the latest specs. Now, I have two choices when I gateway mail out to the
Internet. I can send addresses as

	user@mumble.dec.com

which is "correct" but useless to more than half of the recipients, or I can
send

	user%mumble.dec@decwrl.dec.com

which is a hack but is useable by (almost) everyone.

Being conservative in what we send, we choose the latter and do not insist
on our right to send the former just because it is "correct." Maybe in
another couple years we'll be able to "do it right." (Being liberal in what
we accept, we will take almost anything I can convince sendmail to make
sense of. :-)

I do sense a rising tide in favor of domain addresses in UUCP mail and we
may start doing that when the next round of sendmail.cf hacking strikes...
-- 
	Richard Johnsson, DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
	UUCP:  {decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!johnsson
        ARPA:  johnsson@decwrl.dec.com     DEC ENet: rhea::johnsson
	phone: +1 415 853 6676