The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Miles Fidelman <address@concealed>]

Folks,

Many of us just had to deal with the impacts of DMARC on our lists.

In the aftermath, I've been participating on the dmarc-ietf email list - 
trying to discuss ways to "fix DMARC" to better coexist with lists and 
other 3rd-party services (like "send this article to....").

Unfortunately, it seems like the discussion is bogged down in two regards:
- the ietf-dmarc working group is charted to "enhance DMARC" - dealing 
with its impacts is not really the focus
- folks want a general purpose solution

Personally, I'd like to see a short-term solution to make our lives 
easier, as list managers - sort of the way that NAT has been dealing 
with IPv4 address exhaustion, while we wait for IPv6 to happen.

I've been thinking along the lines of an update to RFC2369 - the 
16-year-old document defines the List-* headers.  Say by adding a couple 
of headers along the lines of:
List-Original-Author: <the original author>
List-Original-Reply-To: <the original message's Reply-To>
List-Reply-To: <the list-specific reply-to - either author of list>

Seems to me that this would:
1. give us a standard way to find the original author (and for HTML 
mail, to reply by clicking on a mailto: URL in the header)
2. provide standardized information that could be used by MUAs for 
identifying, and presenting reply options (maybe leading to "reply to 
list" and "reply to author" buttons starting to show up on toolbars)
3. set the stage for adding some authentication mechanisms that 
accomplish what DMARC is intended to do (e.g. by adding a few more 
headers that cryptographically authenticate the new List- headers and 
bind them to the message body)

It strikes me that this might proceed rather quickly, if incorporated 
into an RFC co-authored and submitted by folks from the mailing list 
software community (i.e., the folks who'd write the patches to Sympa, 
Mailman, ezmlm, etc) - particularly if some running code were to be 
implemented as part of the process.  (Can you say, "rough consensus and 
running code?")

Reactions?  Anybody want to collaborate on a draft RFC for submission 
through the independent submissions path? Any thoughts on who needs to 
be involved from the Sympa community, and/or from the other mailing list 
software communities?

Miles Fidelman (a frustrated sympa administrator)





--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra