[Discuss] DMARC issue, Yahoo and beyond

[Derek Martin]

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 06:55:13PM -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
> With the caveat that I did not list Mutt by name but that's quibbling.
> Point is, as you've experienced yourself, Mutt's behavior is not
> consistent when improperly-set Reply-To fields are in play.

I admit I'd forgotten this; for the longest time I had a patch which I
wrote to fix this applied to my mutt; Mutt dev being what it is
(basically dead) the maintainers didn't have any interest in applying
it.  I have no use to maintain patches forever so I stopped bothering.

> The reason is simple: the program is trying to deal with two conflicting
> directives. 

I don't see any conflict.  Reply-to says where to send responses
intended for the sender, at the sender's behest; this does not in any
way preclude sending additional copies to OTHER recipients.  So I
think the reason is not so simple, and the behavior is completely
brain-dead.

But that's just me.

> Or you can pick the third option: don't insert or alter Reply-To fields.
> If there is no Reply-To field then there is no conflict. If there is no
> conflict then any given MUA will behave consistently for its user.

Or you can pick the "right" option: make reply-to work sanely in all
mail programs...  As implemented currently, reply-to is next to useless,
and as you say, detrimental... even when used as intended.  It should
not be thus.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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