Jon,
With respect to the derivation of the string, RFC2821 is wrong.
JK> It's regrettable that this statement,
JK> which has been conserved right through from RFC788, can no longer be
JK> referred back to the original author.
That's ok. Jon worked collaboratively and some of the original
participants are still around. But I don't think it matters much for
this discussion.
The original thinking was that MailFrom did state who the message was
from. But the semantic for _use_ of the value overrides the description
of its source. This was a case of unnecessarily constraining the
permitted source of the value, compared with real-world usage.
JK> I read this as claiming that the originator address (sender) is given in
JK> MAIL FROM. Is this document wrong as well? Or have I just misread it?
The history of referring to Mail From has been the view that it really
does say something about where the mail came from.
My own realization that this is an error only came about from
involvement with a startup for processing subscription bulk mail, a few
years ago.
d/
--
Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com>
Sunnyvale, CA USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>