ietf-dkim
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Re: [ietf-dkim] Seriously.

2008-01-21 12:32:31


Tony Finch wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, J D Falk wrote:
How many people here have EVER seen a real message (not just a test to
see if it'd work) with multiple addresses in the From: header?

I have sent messages From: multiple authors, e.g. a party invitation from
me and my wife. It was not an interop success :-) Recipients' clients
would typically ignore one of the addresses or get slightly confused, both
when displaying the message and when replying to it.


There are two different issues in this thread that I think ought to dominate:

1. Multiple From addresses are in the RFC2822 standard, folks. The capability was defined in RFC 733 (1977) and has been retained in every iteration up to the current RFC2822 revision work. That means that it has gone through repeated review by the email standards community. Why in the world would it be appropriate for the DKIM working group to debate its legitimacy?

2. While it is certainly useful to prune obsolete constructs, it is dangerous to assume that what a particular segment of the community is familiar with is all that ought to be allowed. Email is a very general-purpose tool for human communications. Human communications is a very, very rich space. Just because on or another person -- or lots of them -- do not use a feature does not mean its use can be ignored or denied.

When one standard is built on another, the new one acts to its own peril when it seeks to impose restrictions on the use of the base specification, especially when the restrictions are arbitrary.

d/
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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