[petsc-dev] Fwd: [petsc-maint #124771] bug report

[Barry Smith]

On Jul 19, 2012, at 5:46 PM, Jed Brown wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> > This is what I do for myself [with pine]
> 
>    Doesn't solve the problem because the user still has in their header the developers email address.
> 
> This is something that a developer using certain hosts can do to make the issue moot, not something that involves the user.

    I do not understand this. If the user knows your email address they can still send you email. You are telling me you can send me an email that does not contain your email address somewhere in the header? 

   yes  reply-to is a good start but it is not a finish. People by-pass that.

>  
> >> Alternative would be for petsc-maint to remove the user's email from
> >> reply-to when it delivers to us, then match message headers so that our
> >> replies which go only to petsc-maint would be forwarded to the original
> >> reporter. Seems very fragile.
> 
>     That is what it should do. Nothing fragile about it. Not hard shit.
> 
> What happens when the user Cc's other people in a follow-up. We don't even see the Cc's, but petsc-maint keeps emailing them. Even if the user shortens the Cc list, does the server know to remove it? Suppose the initial report Cc's some people that might be interested, but later they remove those addresses and send something sensitive that the original Cc list should not be able to see. It would have to be written carefully to preserve email semantics while emulating all of us being a single address. I don't have a reason why it can't be done, but I think it's something that could easily be messed up. 
>  
> > And then there will be no more private
> > messages [between us] on petsc-maint :)
> 
>     Why? petsc-maint server will always bounce everything sent to it back to the developers.
> 
> How often does some not-to-be-named developer remove the user from the Cc list and make a snide remark?
> 
> If you answered Never, you earn two points.

    This is easy. The not-be-named developer simply modifies the subject line in any way. The match doesn't work so the message does not go back to the user.

   Barry