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Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 02:46:52 +0100
To: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>, drums@cs.utk.edu
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
Subject: Re: IETF draft on the "Mail-Followup-To" header

At 20.20 +0000 97-11-25, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
> You are continuing to provide a rather annoying set of semantics for
> nonexistent Mail-Followup-To fields. You are, by your own admission,
> trying to browbeat everyone into adding Mail-Followup-To, because you
> think that will speed the transition.
>
> But the transition doesn't need any help. It is _already_ in everyone's
> interest to support Mail-Followup-To.
>
> If an implementor is willing to add Mail-Followup-To to every message,
> fine. But he shouldn't be forced into it

Where does my proposal text say this? I have scanned through the
proposal carefully and find no text making Mail-Followup-To mandatory.

It would be more useful if you said what your alternative is,
rather than saying that I provide annoying semantics and am trying
to browbeat people.

The problem is that many people who run mailing list expanders want
to add "Reply-To" to messages. And adding this sometimes can cause
unwanted results, such as reducing the set of recipients (to only
one of two lists to which a message was crossposted, or to only
one sublist of a primary list) or having personal replies wrongly
sent to the list.

I say that a sender who wants to avoid this risk should add a
Mail-Followup-To header. The mailing list expander can then
reasonably assume that this header provides a way of getting
replies to the group, and should not then have to add anything
else.

What is your alternative solution to this problem?


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme