For those of us that feel strongly that email should be a reliable transport medium.

[Matt Kettler]

At 03:56 PM 2/10/2004, Julian Field wrote:
>But in the meantime, does anyone have any good ideas for a happy medium,
>such as enabling it but not documenting it, or producing a nasty log
>message if it is used, or something like that?
>All constructive ideas are most welcome.

Julian, I understand you're in a tough position, caught between the world
and a couple users, but let's face some simple facts.

  The bounce capability of MailScanner is horrifically broken  and not
fixable because of what part of the mailsystem MailScanner attaches to. We
all know and understand this, despite some people's lack of concern for
their neighbors.

Using some kind of fixed "spam bounce" header isn't helpful. It destroys
the bouncer's desire for "reliable" mail, and places a burden on every
other mail system in the universe to set up filters to block garbage from a
couple of people who just don't understand how to configure a mailserver.

There are MANY other options out there to reject mail properly  (ie: 5xx
error in DATA phase), thus there's no need to use MailScanner to do this.
Blacklist lookups are easy, nearly every MTA supports them natively, no
need for MailScanner on this part, which leaves SpamAssassin.

MTA layer integrations for SA exist. They work, and they do it right.
MailScanner is extraordinarily versatile but it can't do everything.
Sometimes people need a tool other than MailScanner to do the job
properly.  Exim users can use exiscan, Sendmail users can use
spamass-milter or mimedefang. I'm not sure about tools for postfix and
qmail, but I'm sure they exist too.

Really, my constructive criticism is to suggest that the users who want
MailScanner to bounce spam go use another tool.


I LOVE MailScanner, but why put broken code back in to keep a few users?
Particularly when those users are going to use MailScanner in a way which
tarnishes it's reputation?

Julian, I honestly believe you did the right thing removing this
functionality. It doesn't belong. If some people get mad about it, let
them. Putting the functionality back is just facilitating laziness and
creates broken mailservers at the expense of others.