Subject: Unsolicited Success MDN

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 20:57:24 -0700

Folks,

RFC2532 specifies "A recipient MUST NOT generate an unsolicited MDN to 
indicate successful processing."  I did not find a similar prohibition in 
RFC2298 (MDN spec) and cannot remember the argument for the proscription in 
the fax-over-email environment.

It seems to me that the primary effect of the restriction is to invite a 
receiver to invent a new message for sending unsolicited notices of 
successful processing.

Comments?

d/

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Dave Crocker                                         Tel: +1 408 246 8253
Brandenburg Consulting                               Fax: +1 408 273 6464
675 Spruce Drive                             <http://www.brandenburg.com>
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA                 <mailto:[email-masked]>

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From: "Michael J. Ruhl" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:32:44 -0700

> receiver to invent a new message for sending unsolicited notices of

Like you have said, there doesn't appear to be any explicit verbage
that indicates that a recipient MUST NOT generate an unsolicited MDN,
but there is a lot of verbage that indicates that an MDN should be
sent ONLY if it is requested.  For instance the beginning of section 2
say:

2.  Requesting Message Disposition Notifications

   Message disposition notifications are requested by including a
   Disposition-Notification-To header in the message.

And again in:

2.1

   If it is desired to request message disposition notifications for
   some recipients and not others, two copies of the message should be
   sent, one with an Disposition-Notification-To header and one
without.

And one last comment on the explicitness of the MDN request, the
actual header indicates where the MDN should be sent.  If there is no
MDN request, where should the message be sent?  I know the return
address could be use, and that it there is the comment that if the
return address and the MDN request are not the same that permission
SHOULD be requested.  But all of this implies that if there is not MDN
request there SHOULD NOT be an MDN response.

Another issue, which I think is just as important, is that if an MDN
message is sent to a box that does not know what an MDN message is,
what should it do with it?

Mike