On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 06:13, Michel Bouissou wrote:
No, no.
The "+" character, once again, does not mean that <<the sender is
willing to stand behind messages from his domain from this server,
putting his reputation on the line.>>
It doesn't mean either that the sender asks <<please trust that mail from a
certain server>>
Actually the sender doesn't ask anything such as "please trust..." and he
makes no assertion about a given message.
The sender domain *ONLY* asserts "this server is legitimate for sending mail
coming from my domain". And not anything further than this.
There are two issues here: What should the spec try to say (and imply),
and what does the spec actually say (and imply.)
Let's address them separately.
On what-should-the-spec-try-to-say:
As a recipient, I care whether a piece of mail is authentic.
I don't care whether the server is legitimate versus
possibly-legitimate if that bit of information doesn't
mean I can conclude that the mail is authentic.
If we were to take your interpretation of the current spec, PASS
wouldn't be useful as a more positive statement than NEUTRAL.
So, if what you say were true, what would be the purpose in having
a PASS result in the spec at all?
What good would it actually do in the real world, especially
compared to an alternative the-message-is-legitimate possibility?
If it had no useful purpose, (as I believe is the case with your
interpretation), I would say that we should change the spec so
it did, (such as the interpretation I claim is valid.)
So since you've claimed that PASS doesn't mean the message is
authentic, I'm curious if you think it *should* mean that?
On what-the-spec-does-say:
Quating from the latest marid draft:
http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg02719.html:
|5.2 Pass
|
| An SMTP server receiving this result SHOULD treat the message as
| authentic. It may accept or reject the message depending on other
| policies.
There's nothing about server legitimacy mentioned there, instead both
sentences refer to the incoming message itself.
--
Mark Shewmaker
mark(_at_)primefactor(_dot_)com