Re: [ietf-smtp] Curious, with this now being associated to emailcore, should list name change?

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Tuesday, July 21, 2020 23:16 -0400 Keith Moore
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 7/21/20 9:08 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>>> I think it's slightly deeper than that, which is that every
>>> time one party adds a new header field, some number of other
>>> parties decide that they can delete or modify that field, or
>>> use it to validate or invalidate the message.   So random
>>> parties making random decisions about message headers are
>>> detrimental to email reliability.
>> I agree with that.  But that is the justification for
>> registered header field names, preferably well-documented and
>> stable ones.
> 
> I suspect this is not an issue that can be addressed by any
> combination of registration and/or field-naming constraints in
> the absence of instructions to message-handling software about
> which fields (if any) they can add, modify, or delete.
> 
> I love the format's extensibility but I suspect there's a
> point of diminishing returns.   The message header has
> become a garbage dumping ground, and it might need some
> cleaning up.

Agreed.  But also agree with Dave that it is difficult to
imagine how cleaning up such a dump (even if there were
consensus on that characterization) could be within scope for
emailcore.   It probably is in scope for this list but I hope we
don't need to separate emailcore to a separate list in order to
get anything done there.   ...Another decision I hope we can
defer until after the BOF.

  john