🚀 go-pugleaf

    I have seen the question of replying to the Return-Path come up
    zillions of times.  Why won't people read RFC 821 and 822 instead
    of asking this question (or complaining about software which does
    not reply to the Return-Path)?

I am perfectly well aware of the fact that the Return-Path CAN be
different from the From and that there are good reasons why it sometimes
is.  And I'm not talking about what address should be used for replies.

What I want to know is WHY in the obvious cases (like the one I showed)
IS it different.  Given that the sender of a message generally does
not (manually) specify the contents of either the Return-Path or From,
why do the two fields end up being different in the way they are in
the example I gave?  I am hardpressed to believe that it is a desirable,
intentional, or rational feature that the 2 should be different in
the trivial case.  I find it hard to believe that whoever wrote the
software that caused the behavior I saw considers the difference
anything less than a misfeature, if not an outright bug.

What I'm really talking about here is the confusion factor:  seeing
a Return-Path and From that do not agree might lead one to believe
that there is some significance in the difference -- otherwise, why
would they be presented differently?