Re: Who sets Sender:?

[Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>]

* prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc)  on Tue, 21 May 2002
| But in your example of specifying one of your addresses in From and
| another in Sender depending on where you happen to be sending from,
| Sender provides no information not already available in Received - it
| indicates not who did what, but where you did it from.  So why bother?

Because it was a contrived example, and not a good one.

Here are the issues:

1. Sender is largely useless for mail except in limited circumstances.

2. RFC 2822 requires a Sender header be generated when the identities of
   the originator and sender differ.

3. RFC 2822 does not clearly define the identities of the various agents
   involved in mail handling.

I choose to use a definition of "identity" that meets the criteria given by
both RFC 2822 and RFC 1039(?, I always forget the Usenet RFC number), and
place the onus on the system and network for proper configuration and
masqerading when necessary.  This has the manifold benefit of making every
news and mail user agent work out of the box.

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