Re: Your setting Return-Path to YOU in your cygwin@cygwin postings

[Owen Rees <owen.rees@hp.com>]

--On Thursday, March 05, 2009 13:27:56 +0000 Dave Korn wrote:

>   This is how the internet has always worked: someone proposes an idea,
> some other people support it in software, everyone tries it out and if it
> works good it gets widely-adopted.  The whole standardisation process is
> very much an after-the-fact matter of documenting what the de facto
> standards are and providing a gold-standard for interoperability so that
> any little misaligned wrinkles between the various implementations can be
> ironed out.

If the idea had been proposed this century...

>   The most widespread use is in NDRs, which add "Return-Path: <>" so that
> you don't get bounces, loops and explosions of NDRs for NDRs for NDRs and
> so on.

The Return-Path header would be used only if a message is being relayed via 
some non-SMTP mail transport that understands internet message headers and 
an error occurs in that non-SMTP environment.

In transit via SMTP messages SHOULD NOT contain a Return-Path header. The 
reverse path is carried in the SMTP envelope and delivery errors are 
reported using the SMTP envelope addresses.

-- 
Owen Rees; speaking personally, and not on behalf of HP.
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