Subject: [Emailcore] forwarding, aliases, and mailing lists

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2021 15:19:08 -0500

Hi.

(Editor hat on)

I have been rereading the discussion on this topic, thinking
about the interim meeting discussion, and studying RFC 5321
vis-a-vis.  I now think that several of the comments result from
unnecessary separation of related materials in 5321, especially
materials in sections 3.4 and 3.9.

I therefore propose to consolidate those two sections, removing
redundant material and clarifying definitions.  

That leads to two questions:

(1) Is doing that generally acceptable?  If it is not, I don't
want to do the work, in part because it would probably be hard
to undo.  Note, fwiw, that this is one of the types of changes
we avoided in constructing 2821 and 5321, so one consideration
of its acceptability is whether people are willing to do a
careful review.  If it is controversial, the change won't be
made (and no other change will be made on this topic) in
rfc5321bis-08, probably lowering the odds of our being finished
by March.

(2)  As I read the text and review other notes, it appears that
we may have made a historical distinction between an "alias" and
"forwarding".  The latter appears to have been about
substituting and using a different address within a host or
administrative domain; the latter to an entirely different
system.  If there is any text in 5321 that requires that one
input address be replaced by one output address, I have not yet
been able to find it.  One of the suggestions made during the
interim was that we get rid of the distinction and use only one
term (I think with the assumption that "forwarded" was not used
elsewhere than in 3.9).  Are we confident that we want to
eliminate the distinction?  Or  that we do not?

Awaiting comments or instructions...

    john

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Dec 2021 23:19:21 -0500

>(1) Is doing that generally acceptable?

OK by me.

>system. ...

While you're at it, you should look at section 7.4 about
the 251 and 551 response codes.

I believe that a very long time ago, the idea was that forwarding was
for people who had moved, was intended to be temporary with 251 and
551 response codes to tell senders to update their address books,
while aliases were for role accounts and local nicknames. Dunno if
that ever actually worked but it sure doesn't work now, and I see no
reason to preserve the distinction.

R's,
John

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2021 08:35:25 -0500

--On Tuesday, December 14, 2021 23:19 -0500 John Levine
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...

>> (2)  As I read the text and review other notes, it appears
>> that we may have made a historical distinction between an
>> "alias" and "forwarding".  The latter appears to have been
>> about substituting and using a different address within a
>> host or administrative domain; the latter to an entirely
>> different system. ...
> 
> I believe that a very long time ago, the idea was that
> forwarding was for people who had moved, was intended to be
> temporary with 251 and 551 response codes to tell senders to
> update their address books, while aliases were for role
> accounts and local nicknames. Dunno if that ever actually
> worked but it sure doesn't work now, and I see no reason to
> preserve the distinction.

IIR, at one time --long ago and before we became nearly as
sensitive about disclosures of privacy-related things-- the
stuff about updating address books was heavily used (in at least
some parts of the Internet) and worked.  And, yes, that was the
distinction I was referring to.  I can certainly clarify that
and put in a cross-reference or two whether we consolidate the
two subsections or not.

thanks,
   john