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

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 7/22/20 1:49 AM, John C Klensin wrote:

>> 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 [1] 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.

I will certainly agree that there is no immediately obvious fix to the 
header garbage dump problem.

As for the list, if emailcore goes on for more than a few weeks, I think 
it could be problematic to devote the ietf-smtp list exclusively to that 
narrow set of topics.  ietf-smtp has served since the early 1990s as a 
general discussion on SMTP-related topics with even that scope 
interpreted somewhat widely.   There's a lot of inertia around treating 
the list that way, and it seems like conflicts over the scope of the 
discussion are inevitable if the same list tries to serve both purposes.

More subtly, some solutions are not within the scope of emailcore even 
if the topic or problem is.

So my recommendation is to use a separate list for emailcore.

For what it's worth, when I was musing about the harm done by email 
header pollution, I didn't expect that the solution was likely to fit 
within emailcore's scope.

Keith