Subject: RE: Are vacation and procmail MUAs?

From: "Woodhouse, Gregory J." <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:56:34 -0600

Believe me, I'm well aware that sendmail isn't the only MTA in 
existence, and I certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise. It would, 
however, seem rather odd to discuss deployed message filtering systems 
without considering procmail (as an example, not necessarily as a 
model for how I think such systems should work.) Obviously, since 
procmail is normally invoked through sendmail, discussing procmail 
will entail reference to sendmail.

Anyway, you're point about functionality and architecture is certainly 
a valid one. While I suspect most users probably don't think about 
procmail any more than se...their MTA (sorry, I couldn't resist), and 
probably less, users do think of vacation as a program they use. 
Still, there is a fundamental architectural difference between 
programs like vacation and what might be called "passive clients" like 
POP/IMAP clients. Anyway, we need some kind of a terminological 
distinction (MFA?). I'm open to suggestions.

Finally, with regard to your point about the appropriateness of MTAs 
running programs on behalf of the user: I certainly don't feel 
disposed to argue with you. I think procmail (when invoked via 
.forward) represents an attempt to fill a need, and I believe that 
need is real, but that certainly does not mean I think this is the 
ideal solution. The very fact that a user can do a lot of damage 
through having a misconfigured .procmailrc is argument enough that the 
solution is flawed. Don't misunderstand my comments as an attempt to 
argue otherwise.

Gregory Woodhouse [email-masked]
May the dromedary be with you.

----------
From:  Andy Poling [SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent:  Wednesday, January 14, 1998 7:27 PM
To:  Woodhouse, Gregory J.
Cc:  [email-masked]'
Subject:  Re: Are vacation and procmail MUAs?

You're confusing functionality with who runs things when.  Procmail 
and
other processing and other forwarding software and functions can (and
should) operate independantly of the MTA, and they operate on the 
user's
behalf (even if the user didn't actually "run" them herself).

The fact is that you do sort of make a valid point in a backwards way, 
and
that point is that the MTA/MDA should *not* be running software on 
behalf of
the user.

And puh-lease stop saying "sendmail".  That is only one example of an 
MTA
(say it with me: "em-tee-ay").  There are other MTAs that (properly 
IMHO)
_don't_ run user-supplied programs on behalf of the user.

-Andy

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