Nathaniel Borenstein wrote:
This may seem like splitting hairs, because I agree that the sender
caused the initial problem, but are you saying that because the
message/rfc822 object was incorrectly formatted (because of the
inclusion of the From line), the downstream software was justified in
throwing that offending line away? I'm skeptical because it doesn't
actually make anything better, and it seems to me that "correcting" the
contents is far more likely to cause harm than good. -- Nathaniel
When you step outside the bounds of defined behavior, what's the right
thing to do?
Postel's Maxim is a two edged sword. Yes, the mailing list server should
accept the message. But if it cares about sending out correct email,
it's facing a dilemna. What should it do?
Obviously, the programmer in this situation must make some choices. S/he
could do nothing, or s/he could fix up the message somehow. And if s/he
chooses to fix up the message, what's the right fix? Certainly, all of
those choices are justifiable.
Tony Hansen
tony(_at_)att(_dot_)com