To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: stdio.h: broken standard compliance.
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Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:17:50 -0700
From: Kaz Kylheku <kaz AT kylheku DOT com>
Message-ID: <74cdf97625059065e70db34728d54fa5@127.0.0.1>
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Christopher Faylor writes:
> The cygwin mailing list does not set Reply-To.  It does set
> "Mail-Followup-To".

Effectively, there is no difference.

This is an idiotic header that is defined by a 1998 IETF draft
that was never approved, as far as I can find.

This *DEAD* draft is here:

http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-to-00.txt

This document, in a nutshell, says "Reply-To is broken, so here is
a replacement". But the replacement is just as poor and not needed.
Reply-To is not broken; it's a tool for a specific job.

For a good discussion see:

http://pjakma.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/mail-followup-to-considered-harmful/

(Highlight: ``Mail-Followup-To == more mess == even more 
brokenness.'')

According to this cretinous IETF draft, the new
header IS allowed to be set by mailing list expanders, unlike
Reply-To, which is just for authors. Good grief, look:

  2.3 Mailing List action

  A mailing list expander may insert the "Mail-Followup-To" header,
  with a reference to the list, if there is no previous
  "Mail-Followup-To" in the message. A mailing list expander
  SHOULD NOT change an existing "Mail-Followup-To" header, since
  this may reduce the set of recipients suggested in the original 
message.

This is still a very rude and completely unnecessary
thing for a mailing list expander to do.

But it does seem to provide an API for communicating with the list
by a nonsubscriber: set your own Mail-Followup-To header which
the list must respect, if it obeys what the above document.

This is even explicitly documented:

   2.2 Sender Action
   [ ... ]
   4. When a message is sent to a mailing list, which contains
      sublists, there is a risk that the sublists will insert
     "Reply-To" or "Mail-Follow-Up-To" headers referring to the
     sublist. If this happens, replies might be sent to the
     sublist, and thus not  reaching the full set of readers
     of the primary mailing list. Use of the "Mail-Followup-To"
     can be used by the author or the primary mailing list
     to stop sublists inserting "Mail-Followup-To" in the header.

Easier said than done for many people. Now you  need every
mail client to have the option to set the header, and for users
to have the prescience of knowing when it has to be used.
(Or sticking it into every outgoing message, just in case!)


Kindly, someone please fix the Cygwin mailing list not to add this
idiotic nonstandard header described in a 13 year old dead
IETF draft.


> [rest of message snipped since it was based on an incorrect
> assumption]

That isn't a fair characterization of everything that the
rest of the message was about.


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