At 1:37 PM -0500 1/30/1997, Ken Dykes wrote:
>while Brad writes a reasonable message, i must take one minor exception...
>
>>Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 09:17:26 -0500
>>From: Brad Knowles <brad@his.com>
>>Subject: Re: fresh horror from AOL
>>
>> Check the comp.mail.sendmail FAQ. That wouldn't get written
>>without their [AOL] support. Check all the mailing lists run on
>
>of course it would have been.
>dont presume that just because AOL do something that it wouldn't have
>been done otherwise.
No, although I was maintaining it when I was hired, I guarantee
you that I wouldn't have had the time or interest to continue for
much longer, had I not been hired into a position where I would be
implementing that sort of thing on a daily basis and managing the
resulting systems.
The original sendmail FAQ as it was certainly wouldn't have
gotten much work at all, had I not taken it over from Eric. And I
don't believe that there would have been anyone interested or willing
to take it over if I'd let the thing drop a year and a half ago.
>so, if AOL is so supportive of sendmail users, when will AOL's own mail
>software do the sendmail-thing with respect to "Precedence: list (or bulk)"
>and NOT send back whole digests just to say "user invalid".
That's a flaw in the way our gateway system works, and we are
spending millions of dollars to replace the whole thing (removing our
dependance on sendmail for that function).
At that point, we will generate "invalid user" email messages
during the collection phase, and it will be up to the sending MTA to
generate the bounce and send it back (which would be whatever MTA
your mailing list management package uses). Since we will have never
accepted the message in the first place (at least, not to that
recipient), there will be no possibility for us to cause the bounce
to mis-delivered.
And by the way, if you'll check the README that ships with
sendmail (up to 8.8.5), you'll note that I personally have made
several suggestions or actual contributions of code. I am
particularly proud of the fact that support for TCP-Wrappers is now
integrated, so that Email Administrators across the world can have
access to this very powerful tool to help them control abuse of their
systems.
I could not possibly have made those contributions, were I not at
a place like AOL where those kinds of issues came up, and where the
results end up benefitting everyone.
>you'd think the resulting massive reduction in bandwith at their own
>gateways would be to their own advantage...
Yup, it would. And it will. We've been working on this
replacement system for several months now, and it's finally getting
to the point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But we've had to make sure that it got implemented right the
first time, so that we don't have the same kinds of problems as
CompuServe did when they first rolled out their new gateway system.
--
Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com
comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer <http://www.his.com/~brad/>
finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code
The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at <http://www.his.com/~brad/sendmail/>
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