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Re: Dan Bernstein's issues about namedroppers list operation

2003-01-10 11:55:10
thomas, et al,

i have a bone to pick.  while dr. bernstein would most likely say that
i am no friend to him nor to his chosen issues, the fact is that his
complaint has some validity if you look at it edge-on rather than face-on.

Namedroppers is a posters-only mailing list that is run in conformance
with the policies outlined in
http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/IESG/STATEMENTS/mail-submit-policy.txt.

Specifically, all mail sent to namedroppers is:

1) first run through spamassassin. Mail that is rejected here is not
   archived, as the number of such messages is large. All mail sent to
   mailing lists on the server hosting namedroppers is run though
   spamassassin, so this is not a namedroppers-specific procedure.

this is just wrong.  spamassassin operates at the MUA level, and as such,
the originating MTA receives a "final OK" and drops the connection before
spamassassin begins its job.  the MUA's only choices when dropping mail
due to spamassassin's filtering are: issue a new message back to the sender
to inform them of the bounce, or silently drop.  because most of the mail
spamassassin will drop has an invalid sender address, choice #2 is common.

for an IETF list, if submitted mail is being dropped, there must be notice
back to the sender.  because the sender address will generally not be usable,
the only possible choice is to issue the rejection at the MTA level.  this
will require tighter integration of spamassassin into the MTA level than is
currently done on randy's system, or indeed, currently done anywhere at all.

silent drops are fatal to the IETF's policy of open discourse, and dr.
bernstein is right to complain about that aspect of the namedroppers problems
he is experiencing.  every time one of dr. bernstein's messages is dropped, 
dr. bernstein's originating MTA should experience an SMTP delivery error and
therefore have the option of informing dr. bernstein that such rejection has
occurred.

one other very minor point:

I've noticed that Randy Bush discarded Len Budney's note on this topic:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=asnul4%24640g%241%40isrv4.isc.org

Not so.  Len's note was posted to usenet, not to the namedroppers
mailing list. Mail from usenet cannot be assumed to get gatewayed back
to the mailing list.

as the usenet moderator of comp.protocols.dns.std, i set up a bidirectional
gateway which isc operates.  this gateway is far from perfect, and many posts
have been dropped (silently, of course) over the years, and anyone who wants
to really ensure that their words appear on namedroppers should avoid the use
of the usenet->namedroppers gateway, and mail their words directly to the
namedroppers list.

paul