Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 12:28:12 +0100 (MET)
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: ietf-drums <drums@cs.utk.edu>
Subject: Drums proposal: Making Message-ID more mandatory and be unique
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951229122729.5351G-100000@ester.dsv.su.se>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Mandarory message header fields?

I cannot find any text in RFC 822 which speicifies any
heading field as mandatory, except "Received " when a message
has passed at least one MTA.

I suggest that this is changed in the RFC 822 document, to
specify at least that Message-ID should be mandatory, with
the text:

The following header fields should be included in all
messages: Message-ID. Mailers should however accept incoming
messages which lacks this field.

Rationale: Mandatory Message-ID makes it possible for mail
agents which store messages in a data base to establish links
between messages which are replies to or references each
other. Message-ID is also useful to eliminate loops and
duplicates of the same message.

In this case, one single mailer producing one single message
in the middle of a reply chain, and which does not use
Message-ID, will disrupt the whole chain. Therefore, it is
not suitable to leave this up to each implementor to decide.

Question: Is there some other header field besides Message-ID
which should be mandatory?

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