There is no such citation of which I am aware.
Personally, I agree with the choice of responding to the message From:
header as opposed to the envelope from. The message From: header is the
author of the content of the message and if that content is "urgent" in
any way, I would want that person to know I am not being timely.
In any case, I don't think the primary issue is where to respond but
rather when to respond. A response should only be created when the
address of the recipient appears in either the message To: or Cc:
header.
Of course, either set of rules means that certain mailing list softare
habits are, shall we say, unorthodox. I am often confounded by which
set of rules is really the lesser of two evils, since at this point
neither is a clear winner.
Jim
On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Dan Wing wrote:
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 16:19:25 -0700
From: Dan Wing <dwing(_at_)Cisco(_dot_)COM>
To: ietf-smtp(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject: vacation replies to From: or envelope from
Our IT group here has recently installed a product which supports a
vacation-like feature, but it replies to the From: field instead of the
envelope from (MAIL FROM).
Does anyone know of a cite for recommended behavior with autoreply
vacation-like programs. I checked several RFCs I expected to have such a
cite, but couldn't find anything authoritative.
Thanks.
-Dan Wing