Re: Who sets Sender:?

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

* Matt Armstrong <matt@lickey.com>  on Mon, 20 May 2002
| The point of the Sender: header is mostly lost on me.

Maybe it will help clear things up if you consider the idea that an
individual has many identities in a networked environment.  For example, I
am ratinox@peorth.gweep.net.  I am also ratinox@rei.nerv.gweep.net,
ratinox@sidehack.gweep.net, ratinox@ccs.neu.edu, samurairat@spamcop.net and
a few others.  Because ccs.neu.edu is made up of many nodes itself I am
ratinox@foo.ccs.neu.edu where "foo" is about 50 different machines.

Consider the situation where I assume the identity samurairat@spamcop.net,
and I am sending mail from my shell on adhara in the NUCCS cluster.  By
strict reading of RFC 2822, the originator (me) is samurairat@spamcop.net,
but the sender (also me) is ratinox@adhara.ccs.neu.edu.  A less drastic
example is ratinox@ccs.neu.edu as originator and ratinox@adhara.ccs.neu.edu
as the sender.  They are both me, they are in the same cluster, and mail
sent to either will end up on the one mail server, but they are not the
same identity.

What Gnus is attempting to do is adhere to RFC 2822 which states that,
paraphrased, a Sender header must be generated when the identity of the
originator of the message differs from the identity of the agent
responsible for submitting it to the network.  Gnus will makes its best
attempt at generating this required header if the user fails to do so.

Also, be aware that the Sender header must never be used for anything but
human consumption.  Yes, every mail agent from Microsoft breaks this.  Not
my fault.  Not Gnus' fault, either.

-- 
Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>    \ Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ 
PGP Key: at a key server near you!  \ 
       That and five bucks will get you a small coffee at Starbucks.