Re: Mandatory From field, anonymity, and hacks

> > The mailboxes (N.B. no named groups) in the From field are used for 
> > replies
> > (in the absence of a Reply-To field).  So a hypothetical From field 
> > with
> > no mailbox is unworkable in the absence of a Reply-To field, and is
> > pointless in the presence of a Reply-To field.
> On the contrary, it is not at all unworkable in News and mailing 
> lists. It
> simply encourages people to reply to the group/mailing list rather 
> than to
> the poster, which is actually not such a bad thing.
not when the sender manually chooses to direct replies there.  it is a 
bad thing when the list mungs reply-to.
also, From is _not_ pointless in the presence of reply-to because a 
recipient might prefer to reply to the author of the message rather 
than to the address where the author of that message set reply-to.  
reply-to is set based on the author's assumptions about what kind of 
replies are likely, but sometimes the recipient wants to reply for 
other reasons.
regarding gateways - in general the job of the gateway is to preserve 
the semantics of the original message into the destination environment. 
 the job of the gateway is NOT to correct errors in the original 
message.