Re: [yam] RFC 5321 (was: [Editorial Errata Reported] RFC5321 (1820)

[Alessandro Vesely <[e-mail]>]

SM wrote:
> Hi Alessandro,
> At 01:56 31-07-2009, Alessandro Vesely wrote:
>> searching for "3.9.2" on mail-archive brings only up previous 
>> discussions between you and me on the same subject. You rejected all 
>> of them on various reason, e.g. because the last call had already been 
>> issued, or because of the nature of the forwarding model as expressed 
>> in http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg00468.html. I 
>> never found the discussion where that paragraph has been introduced, I 
>> guess it was not public.

I hadn't searched well enough...

> There were some comments (most likely off-list) on that section prior to 
> the message at the above URL.

The above URL is dated Sat, 16 Feb 2008 07:17:43 -0800. Much later 
than the phrase containing the typo, which I quote again:

                                                    Note that
  the key difference between handling aliases (Section 3.9.1) and
  forwarding (this subsection) is the change to the backward-pointing
  address in this case.

NOTE: This phrase appears _twice_ in RFC 5321. Its second instance is 
much further down in section 4.4, around lines 3282-3284 of the 
numbered draft. Please concede that at least this second occurrence 
has to be removed completely...

That phrase can be found in the differences from -02 to -03, in 
http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-klensin-rfc2821bis-03.txt#diff0057 
Version -02 is of April 17, 2007, -03 is of April 25, 2007, hence any 
message discussing that issue should be archived in 
http://www.imc.org/ietf-smtp/mail-archive/mail5.html. In facts, there 
is a message entitled "RFC2821bis-02 Issue 26: Source routes, 
especially reverse-paths" by John C Klensin, 04/22/2007. That was 
actually concerned with "Appendix C. Source Routes". The text quoted 
above presumably belongs to other "editorial and related changes to 
improve clarity and consistency", in that version's changes.

Frank Ellermann noted the added phrase, and commented about it on 
April 26, 2007

  That's a point where you could mention that this used to be no
  key difference under RFC 821, because "in any case, the SMTP"
  added "its own identifier to the reverse path".  There might be
  better places to explain that RFC 1123 broke the original SMTP
  design in its quest to get rid of the source routes.

That was the concern of the discussion, rather about concepts than 
wording. In facts, Frank used to note discrepant usages of terms (e.g. 
"return path" vs "reverse path", in the same message) but missed also 
this spurious "backward-pointing address". (Currently, there are 
exactly three occurrences of the word "backward" in RFC 5321.) I found 
no other thread mentioning that phrase. John replied

  Send text, but my inclination is to not change this further,
  especially to reflect the long-dead "copy own address into
  reverse-path stuff".

That's it, almost. Frank had dropped that point in his further reply. 
I jumped on that list months later, after Frank's suggestion. I 
independently noted that phrase and had tried to leverage on its 
inconsistency for introducing a conceptual change which had been rejected.


P.S.: This is the first time I spell Frank's name on a public list 
message since September last year. So I also add the ietf-smtp list in 
CC; please change the subject appropriately if replying about this 
last paragraph. I haven't been able to gather any news about Frank, 
and I'm afraid to understand that the common saying "no news is good 
news" doesn't apply in this case.