On Tue, 05 Aug 1997 09:30:22 PDT, Chris Newman said:
A subaddress aware MLM MUST provide a way for a user to use his
primary address with a subaddress for subscription and use just his
primary address for posting. Some ways to meet this requirement include:
(1) Having no restrictions on who can post to the list.
Not Acceptable.
(2) Permitting subscribers to register different posting and submission
addresses.
Pain in the ass.
(3) Ignoring subaddresses for the purpose of permitting postings.
This doesn't work. Remember - the MLM *CAN NOT TELL* whether a piece
of mail from 'a+b(_at_)somedom(_dot_)com' is from a subaddress-aware site or if
it's just from a site that has some OTHER meaning for '+'. As such,
if you "ignore", and the list is closed, you just allowed
'a+c(_at_)somedom(_dot_)com'
to improperly post/subscribe/etc to the list.
This now directly dictates the interoperability issue rather than a
particular solution to it (which is what I should have done in the first
draft). There are plenty of ways to address this requirement without any
significant impact on MLM systems or security validation.
No there aren't. See above.
Bottom line - I think this proposal is a non-starter unless it provides
a way for a *remote* system (such as a MLM or what-have-you) to
determine if the option is available or not.
Do you still feel this is necessary if I make the above change?
Yes. If the remote system is unable to tell if an optional feature is in
use, it *MUST* assume that the feature is *NOT* present. Blindly saying
"This is SO $%(*^$% neat that I'll assume the world does it TOO" is just
a good way to screw the users to the wall.
--
Valdis Kletnieks
Computer Systems Senior Engineer
Virginia Tech
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