You're assuming too much. Just because a message is sent by someone's
authority does NOT mean that they want to receive any kind of automatic
notifications. It would be perfectly reasonable for a CEO to send out
a message of the form:
From: CEO
Reply-to: customer-relations
Sender: secretary
Return-Path: bounce-address (set on delivery from MAIL FROM)
To: customers:;
Why should the secretary get them?
why should the secretary get *what*? NOTHING should get sent to the
address in the Sender field. the only purpose of that field is to
identify who actually caused the message to be sent; it's not intended
to be used for responses.
You are essentially arguing that the messaging applications
should not communicate on the off-chance that the boss might get annoyed
one day.
no, I'm arguing that messaging applications that issue automatic responses
should not make unwarranted assumptions about the roles of those whose
addresses appear in any field other than the return-path field.
What if my boss sends a message to the staff on *my* behalf. What then?
if person A sends a message on person B's behalf, whether that is
appropriate is an issue for person B to decide. it's not an issue
for the mail protocol.
if in sending such a message person A fails to recognize that
MAIL FROM should be set up as appropriate to receive any automatic
responses that might result from that message, person A has
failed to use the mail protocol correctly.
OTOH, if person A does recognize that, and sets up MAIL FROM in
such a way as to direct those responses to an inappropriate place -
that's abuse/misuse, not a failure to use the protocol.
Keith