Subject: Re: New USEPRO path-identity text (Hello, Chair?)

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 12:45:48 -0700 (PDT)

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Such an administrator has not actually violated any MUST AFAICS. He has
>merely exercised bad judgement.

Then we have implicitely told him he can do what he did, and thus his only 
bad judgement was in listening to us. Don't threaten implementors and 
admins who listen to us with having to bear the consequences.

>It has been patiently explained to you many times and by many people that
>"SHOULD" does not equate to "optional".

Where did you see me use the word "equate"? I don't see it anywhere; are 
you putting words in my mouth again? 

"SHOULD" is not mandatory. The opposite of mandatory is optional. It is 
RECOMMENDED that you do something, but you don't have to. It is your 
option. Please find a dictionary and look up the words you don't 
understand.

>And RFC 2142, when it says "if an NNTP server's host name is
>DATA.RAMONA.VIX.COM yet it advertises the domain name VIX.COM in its
>"Path:" headewrs, then email must be deliverable to both <USENET@xxxxxxx>
>and <USENET@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>..." is telling another lie :-) . 

RFC2142 does not define the function of the path header, we do. And prior 
to us, RFC1036 did. And RFC1036 does not say that the path header is a 
list of contact addresses for server admins. It says that the path header 
records the sites through which an article has passed.

>If the designated server for the abuse@ address uses that RBL blacklist,
>then indeed the administrator has not fulfilled his responsibilities under
>whatever MUST/SHOULD/... we write into our draft.

1. Knowing that it is an existing practice and documenting it otherwise is 
simply silly. We know that RBL lists are used; thus we ought to know that 
abuse@ addresses that are the sent email from sites on the RBL are likely 
not to work. Saying that someone MUST have a "working" abuse@ address is 
pretty meaningless, since we know that it can be considered to be 
"working" and still generate bounces.

2. No, if we say SHOULD, then an admin who uses RBL blocking on his abuse@ 
address certainly HAS fullfilled his responsibilities, because SHOULD is 
only a recommendation, and RFC2119 clearly says that he can do other than 
what we recommend.

>[The latest stupidity that has arisen is those abuse@ addresses whose
>virus filters reject emails sent to them containing copies of
>virus-containing emails that have emananated from those ISPs.]

I'm sorry, did I wind up in the wrong working group? I thought this was 
USEFOR, and that we dealt with NEWS and not email. When did it become our 
responsibility to discuss admins who bounce virus-containing emails?

><foo@xxxxxxxxxxx> is syntactically correct, 

No. No dot in domain name. Oh, yeah, the helpful archive again.

> but it is not a "working" email address.

Dunno. Can't tell what you wrote. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Doesn't 
matter. The best we can specify is that the address MUST be syntactically 
correct. We cannot mandate that it must "work" (for whatever definition of 
"work" you want to come up with) because we know ahead of time that there 
will be many places where it will not, and because it is OUTSIDE THE SCOPE 
OF OUR GROUP to redefine RFC2142.

>I note that RFC 2142 (as quoted above) uses "deliverable".
>Would that be better than "working" or "valid"?

Since we know that "deliverable" is just as unlikely as "working" or
"valid", no. You asked me what the correct term ought to be, I told you.
Syntactically correct.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 14:12:02 GMT

>records the sites through which an article has passed.

If, as you are so keen to point out, RFC 2142 is to be regarded as a
standard, and if it states that certain addresses derived from the Path
"must" be deliverable, then it would seem that RFC 2142 has redefined the
meaning of the Path header.

My view, however, is that RFC 2142 is such a shambles that we would be
better deciding for ourselves exactly what we want regarding those
various addresses, and write that into our own standard accordingly.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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