[Mimedefang] GMail (was Re: stripping Received headers based on authentication)

[Les Mikesell]

On 2/17/2010 12:56 PM, David F. Skoll wrote:
>
>>> Transmitting an email via HTTP from a client computer qualifies
>>> as gatewaying by my reading of the RFC.
>
>> That means you have to think my web browser is also an email gateway.
>
> No.  You misunderstand.  The web *server* is the email gateway.  It
> gateways mail *from* the browser (using HTTP) *to* the Internet (using SMTP).

Gateways need something on both sides to participate. If it isn't email 
inside the browser (and it isn't, it is a form that the browser displays 
mindlessly and http carries blindly), how can it be a gateway operation? 
  It originates as email from the web application on the server with the 
user's credentials.

>> The browser displays a form, but only the application at the other end
>> knows anything about the contents being mail.  Which is exactly the same
>> scenario as if I typed it into thunderbird in a remote X window.
>
> I can't tell if you're baiting me or deliberately being obtuse, so I think
> I'll withhold further replies.

Partly both I suppose, but I don't like people interpreting RFC's oddly 
to support their own agenda, and I don't see how anything a browser does 
can be considered as any more than a remote display for a server side 
application.  As an email admin you have the right to discard email 
whimsically - you don't have to interpret RFC's imaginatively to justify 
it.  If that RFC had been intended to cover remote displays or web forms 
it could have said so - web interfaces were pretty well understood by then.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com