Re: important people (!) unable to use sourceware

[Bob Manson <manson@juniper.net>]

In message < Pine.BSF.4.21.0003100031190.83132-100000@deneb.dbai.tuwien.ac.at >, 
Gerald Pfeifer writes:
> 1. The only way to fix the problem of mail servers which still act as
>    open relays today is to create pressure on the admins of those
>    servers -- either directly or indirectly via their customers/users.

I totally agree.  Yes, it's being fascist.  That's fine.  Some ISPs
will always insist on running open relays because it's too much work
to do something more rational, and I believe their customers should be
suitably annoyed with them for doing so.  In no way should it become
my annoyance.

Jason and I have discussed the "only allow subscribers to post" policy
in the past.  IMO it's the best overall solution, but I guess new
lusers can't forge mail when they need to or something.  If the
mailing list software allowed the subscriber to specify multiple
allowed from addresses, there wouldn't be any excuse for not doing
this...

Another idea is to require PGP-signed mail, but I bet nobody'd go for
that :-) A similar idea is to require a magic cookie in the mail
header, which is sorta what "subscriber-only" is but is more flexible.
There are definitely easy-to-implement solutions for the mailing
list/spam issue, but so far nobody's bothered to do it...
						Bob