Subject: Re: [ietf-smtp] Curious, with this now being associated to emailcore, should list name change?

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 01:49:15 -0400

--On Tuesday, July 21, 2020 23:16 -0400 Keith Moore
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> On 7/21/20 9:08 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>>> I think it's slightly deeper than that, which is that every
>>> time one party adds a new header field, some number of other
>>> parties decide that they can delete or modify that field, or
>>> use it to validate or invalidate the message.   So random
>>> parties making random decisions about message headers are
>>> detrimental to email reliability.
>> I agree with that.  But that is the justification for
>> registered header field names, preferably well-documented and
>> stable ones.
> 
> I suspect this is not an issue that can be addressed by any
> combination of registration and/or field-naming constraints in
> the absence of instructions to message-handling software about
> which fields (if any) they can add, modify, or delete.
> 
> I love the format's extensibility but I suspect there's a
> point of diminishing returns.   The message header has
> become a garbage dumping ground, and it might need some
> cleaning up.

Agreed.  But also agree with Dave that it is difficult to
imagine how cleaning up such a dump (even if there were
consensus on that characterization) could be within scope for
emailcore.   It probably is in scope for this list [1] but I
hope we
don't need to separate emailcore to a separate list in order to
get anything done there.   ...Another decision I hope we can
defer until after the BOF.

  john

[1] Noting Dave's comments about people who choose to try to
help a relative newcomer by examining possible cases and
agreeing with him that, if this list were exclusively dedicated
to emailcore work from the time the BOF proposal was announced,
those efforts would probably be inappropriate.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 02:04:35 -0400

> defer until after the BOF.

I will certainly agree that there is no immediately obvious fix to the 
header garbage dump problem.

As for the list, if emailcore goes on for more than a few weeks, I think 
it could be problematic to devote the ietf-smtp list exclusively to that 
narrow set of topics.  ietf-smtp has served since the early 1990s as a 
general discussion on SMTP-related topics with even that scope 
interpreted somewhat widely.   There's a lot of inertia around treating 
the list that way, and it seems like conflicts over the scope of the 
discussion are inevitable if the same list tries to serve both purposes.

More subtly, some solutions are not within the scope of emailcore even 
if the topic or problem is.

So my recommendation is to use a separate list for emailcore.

For what it's worth, when I was musing about the harm done by email 
header pollution, I didn't expect that the solution was likely to fit 
within emailcore's scope.

Keith

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 13:28:20 +0100

On 22/07/2020 07:04, Keith Moore wrote:

> As for the list, if emailcore goes on for more than a few weeks, I 
> think it could be problematic to devote the ietf-smtp list exclusively 
> to that narrow set of topics.  ietf-smtp has served since the early 
> 1990s as a general discussion on SMTP-related topics with even that 
> scope interpreted somewhat widely.   There's a lot of inertia around 
> treating the list that way, and it seems like conflicts over the scope 
> of the discussion are inevitable if the same list tries to serve both 
> purposes.
>
I am open to suggestions whether or not EMAILCORE should have its own 
mailing list. But I think until the BOF is over, we can use this 
([email-masked]) mailing list, as most of the people who care are 
already subscribed to it.