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Re: I-D ACTION:draft-arun-ncc-smtp-02.txt

2005-04-14 08:40:32


----- Original Message -----
From: "Arun Sankar" <arun(_at_)india(_dot_)hp(_dot_)com>
To: "Hector Santos" <hsantos(_at_)santronics(_dot_)com>
Cc: "ietf-smtp" <ietf-smtp(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 7:11 AM
Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-arun-ncc-smtp-02.txt


Creating a different mailing lists is absolutely ok for small
companies/simple mail server. Consider a huge corporate with a whole lot
of aliases and a complex mail structure. Each time you want to eliminate
a few mail-ids from a big list you have to send a request to the
administrator to setup the new alias. This solution is more of a one
time addition and solve the unable to negate problems.

I don't question the possible "benefits"  but you have too many  design
issues here.

Never mind the fact, I don't believe it has anything to do with SMTP (but
then again, I think some SMTP systems has built-in mailing list feature),
but inherently, its not a SMTP concept, atleast I don't think so.  So no
need for ESMTP features.

At the very least, this would be a MUA and LISTSERVER features.

1) The MUA would have to have a new "exclude" concept beside the basic TO:
CC and BC fields.

2) In general, it is the MUA smtp client that "massages" the headers to
cleanly separate the CC/BC from the sent  mail headers .   I can see the MUA
would not be able to include this exclude idea in this part of the process.

3) The LISTSERVER can now to its magic but you have now have a whole new
suite of new security/management and configuration design issues.

--- NCC Support Options ----

[_] Allow Mailing List support for NCC
    [X] Allow List Administrators to use NCC
    [_] Allow User to use NCC
         [X] Send Mail to Administrator for NCC authorization

    [ Button: Edit NCC Exemption List ]
      This is a list of users who YOU can not EXCLUDE (like the Admin)

X shows what I think should be the default settings for a new list.

What else?

Legal?

You probably need a disclaimer in your new subscription welcome message

          Note: Please not that some list information may be excluded
                   from distribution.

Why?

I guess the closest thing to this we have today is our online conferencing
system where we have Public/Private message attributes.  Sometimes you can
get into private conversions with a person or group in this conference and
what others will see is in increase in message counters but they don't see
the mail.    This is the god enough truth - I had people write to me "How
come I can't see the mail in the conferences?"

So as Murphy's law says it will happen with NCC when someone else in the
list who did get the a message and unbeknownst to him he blabs out to the
excluded person about a topic the excluded person knows nothing about.

        "Hey what do you think about that new business proposal?"

        "huh? What are you talking about?"

         "Oh, that .... oh, never mind..."

Please note, this can happen with a BC/CC concept as well.   This is why for
our MUA, it will add a line to the blind copy message text:

        *BLIND COPY! No one is aware you have received a copy of this
message.

To make sure the receiver is aware of the private nature of the message.

So do you need to to add a similar statement for NCC?

Maybe?  In this case, it might have to be a "HUSH" statement to all list
members got the message:

        *HUSH HUSH: The following people did not receive the message"

And so on and so on.

There is just too many design issues here and I personally, I think you can
handle it with separate mailing list that will inherently provide what you
are looking for without the "ergonomic" issues.

Anyway, thats my opinion on this proposal.

--
Hector Santos, Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com




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