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From: johnsson@decwrl.DEC.COM (Richard Johnsson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Trouble with From: lines
Message-ID: <6796@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Sun, 7-Dec-86 01:17:18 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.6796
Posted: Sun Dec  7 01:17:18 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Dec-86 07:07:13 EST
References: <597@cullvax.UUCP> <1353@munnari.oz> <112@piaget.UUCP> <772@maynard.BSW.COM>
Reply-To: johnsson@decwrl.dec.com (Richard Johnsson)
Organization: DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 35

Re: discussion of what should be in From: lines

The discussion has centered around UUCP mail (since that was the original
question). Another aspect of this question is what to do about domain
addresses in Internet mail that are only reachable by sites using MX records
from the domain servers.

There are over 12,000 machines in the DEC.COM domain. They all have MX
records in the DEC.COM domain servers, but most of them do not have Internet
addresses and cannot be reached by Internet sites whose software is not up
to the latest specs. Now, I have two choices when I gateway mail out to the
Internet. I can send addresses as

	user@mumble.dec.com

which is "correct" but useless to more than half of the recipients, or I can
send

	user%mumble.dec@decwrl.dec.com

which is a hack but is useable by (almost) everyone.

Being conservative in what we send, we choose the latter and do not insist
on our right to send the former just because it is "correct." Maybe in
another couple years we'll be able to "do it right." (Being liberal in what
we accept, we will take almost anything I can convince sendmail to make
sense of. :-)

I do sense a rising tide in favor of domain addresses in UUCP mail and we
may start doing that when the next round of sendmail.cf hacking strikes...
-- 
	Richard Johnsson, DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
	UUCP:  {decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!johnsson
        ARPA:  johnsson@decwrl.dec.com     DEC ENet: rhea::johnsson
	phone: +1 415 853 6676