Subject: Re: precedence field and mailing lists

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 15:44:02 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>

> ...
> Could you please point me at the standards (or otherwise) documents
> that describe the semantics of 'Precedence:'?  It sounds interesting
> but I just can't seem to find out what you mean or expect it to do.

`man vacation` on any modern BSD-like UNIX box should say something like:
   No message will be sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a
   option) is part of either the ``To:'' or ``Cc:'' headers of the mail.  No
   messages from ``???-REQUEST'', ``Postmaster'', ``UUCP'', ``MAILER'', or
   ``MAILER-DAEMON'' will be replied to (where these strings are case insen-
   sitive) nor is a notification sent if a ``Precedence: bulk'' or
   ``Precedence: junk'' line is included in the mail headers.  

Near the end you'll likely find something like:
   The vacation command appeared in 4.3BSD.
which the knowledgable translate into "official, open source publication
in 1985 or 1986, depending on access to the Beta tape."
Then there are the at least as ancient words in sendmail documenation.

> ...
> > > > In other words, the IETF itself is not above some standads bending..
> > > what standard are you referring to?
> > How about hoping that X-Loop will be preserved by those peered mailing
> > lists and other gateways and so prevent loops?
> 
> FYI: X-<anything> is by definition - not standard header.

While your words agree with my point, you say them as if you disagree.

> ...
> > A standard is what http://www.m-w.com/ says, "something established by
> > authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example."

> ...
> Something can be 'standard' and never used by anyone. Something can be
> used by everyone and never a 'standard'. 

Perhaps according to the Church of De Jure Standards.
Among those who disagree are dictionaries, heathens, apostates,
and others whose livelihoods or self-esteem don't require the
validation of what other standards bodies officially and revealingly
call "The Standards Process."

> ...
> > I'd rather that AOL took outside comments on their standards, but they're
> > still standards.
>
> Please point me at those standards. Or did you mean undocumented
> protocols? Or did you mean documented and not public protocols?

I mean AOL's protocols, applications, and other computer stuff which meet
the definition of "standard" in http://www.m-w.com/ by being "established
by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example." 
The consent and custom of 23,000,000 people and the authority of AOL meet
all three of those dictionary requirements.  They don't and should not
meet modern IETF requirements for standards track RFCs, but I suspect that
if (perhaps a big 'if') they met technical muster, they would have been
accepted 18 or 20 years ago by the ad hoc group that preceded the IETF.

Which gets me back to the Precedence: header.  That some people dislike
it, many more are ignorant of it, and it has more than one use does not
imply that the IESG should not be using it as the best and only available
fix to a real problem.  That the Precedence: header meets the dictionary
definition of "standard" is gravy, except for the awkwardness of the IETF
admitting that the IETF is not the font of all wisdom.  Long ago that
self-knowledge was a given, and at still is among "legacy programmers."

> ...
> I think the standard definition of standard includes, approved,
> reviewed, and publicly available.

That implies you think that TCP, IP, STMP, and the rest of the IETF's
claim to fame are not standards because they were not externally (since
I'm sure AOL reviews AOL stuff) reviewed more than AOL's, were in practice
no more publically available (who knew of them?), and several years after
being specified, were not merely unapproved but explicitly forbidden by
many national goverments in the many GOSIP's.

Believe it or not, SMTP was not created this year with the publication of
the new SMTP RFC, nor even 1989 with the minor elaborations in RFC 1123.
TCP is not significantly changed from it's ancient, unapproved, unreviewd
(by outsiders), not publicly available (because of obscurity) form.  Thus
the only large scale transport protocols available that meet your
particular definition of "standard" are TP0 through TP4.

Why do I suspect some of the most vigorous supporters of the sanctity of
standards committee authority don't know what I mean by GOSIP and TP4?
In other words and as I said before, many of the revolutionaries moved
into the deposed overlords' offices and accepted fealty from the toadies,
go-ers, empire builders, and courtiers of the old regime, and things went
back to normal.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 23:33:31 +0100 (BST)

On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Vernon Schryver wrote:

>    option) is part of either the ``To:'' or ``Cc:'' headers of the mail.

Over the past few weeks I've been replying to a number
of vacation mails sent to me as a result of posting here with:

I sent mail to a mailing list. Not to you. Your autoreply software
should only reply to mail explicitly To: or Cc: you.
[Oh, and your autoreply is screwed. No body. - optional when needed.]
[Oh, and you're not maintaining a list of addresses already contacted
- optional when needed.]

L.

oh, and you Cc: to postmaster for maximum effect.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 16:08:53 -0700

> Perhaps according to the Church of De Jure Standards.

Well according to those in the IETF (This mailing list you keep
sending to). Did you expect the [email-masked] mailing list
to say everything is a standard just because someone wants it to be?

When in Rome do as the Romans.

When on an IETF mailing list, the language and definitions are
defined in RFC's. They are (at least) Experimental, Informational,
Standards Track, and Standard as defined by the IETF RFC's.

> by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example."

I still seem to be missing your point. Is it that you wish to change the
IETF to be more like the AOL chat rooms? 

> accepted 18 or 20 years ago by the ad hoc group that preceded the IETF.

Again, why are you posting to this group list if you do not
respect its processes? If you are attempting to change something,
then maybe I missed your proposal.

-Doug

---

From: Austin Schutz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 00:04:35 -0700

> should only reply to mail explicitly To: or Cc: you.

	This breaks for mail aliases. Perhaps, if you are root on
a unix machine, you might want someone sending mail to that address
to know you are away?

	Austin

---

From: Austin Schutz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 01:14:10 -0700

> of vacation mails sent to me as a result of posting here with:
	Now _I'm_ getting them :P

	Here are the applicable headers. Note the absence of X-loop or
precedence headers! 

To: [email-masked]
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: precedence field and mailing lists
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 04:14:11 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
Content-Type: text/plain

	If Precendence: bulk stops this broken behavior, it might be
worth implementing, if only to stop the inevitable DOS that will occur
when someone clever and irritating figures out what happens when you
forge mail from one of these weenies to the list. I verified that they
don't respond to mail w/ Precedence: bulk, btw.
	Wanna have some real fun? See what happens when you forge mail
from all of them to each other _and_ cc: the list.
	Of course maybe the Content-Type header lets their software know
that it's a web page, not mail, so it's not necessary to respond to
anyway.

	Austin

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 07:35:34 -0700

>a unix machine, you might want someone sending mail to that address

Not at all. You tell your favorite vacation software what aliases it 
should reply to. If you have a unix system, see the manual page for 
vacation. This after of course having the mail to root go to your 
private mailbox.

Example:

# cat .forward
\paf,"| vacation -a [email-masked] -u paf"
# uname -a
SunOS nix 5.5.1 Generic_103640-24 sun4m sparc SUNW,SPARCstation-20
# man vacation
Reformatting page.  Wait... done

vacation(1)               User Commands               vacation(1)

NAME
      vacation - reply to mail automatically

SYNOPSIS
      vacation [ -I ]
      vacation [ -j ] [ -a alias ] [ -tN ] username
:
:
:
      -a alias   Indicate that alias is one of the  valid  aliases
                for  the  user  running  vacation,  so  that  mail
                addressed to that alias generates a reply.
:
:
:

    paf

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 13:59:16 -0400

>         This breaks for mail aliases.

not if you tell your vacation program which mail aliases are yours.

There was once another draft proposal by Jacob Palme for an auto-submitted
header field, which would allow you to label a message either

auto-submitted (a message automatically generated not in response to any input)
auto-forwarded (such as a message from a mailing list)
auto-replied (an automatic reply to a message)
not-auto-submitted

...but it got bogged down somewhere.  I'd very much like to see 
this go forward - it solves the vacation problem quite neatly,
(just don't reply to any message that is either auto-submitted,
auto-forwarded, or auto-replied) and unlike Precedence, seems 
technically sound.

the idea is borrowed from X.400, but we shouldn't hold that against it. :)

a variant of this header (spelled differently) is defined in RFC 2156.

Keith