Re: Stripping multipart/alternative messages and accepting thetext/plain part.

["Carlos O'Donell" <carlos at systemhalted dot org>]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 11:33 AM, Christopher Faylor
<cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@sourceware.org> wrote:
> If that is what you got from my message then I really wasn't clear.

No problem, that's the purpose of good 3-way communication.

> I'll try to be clearer: I'm not interested in dealing with any fallout
> from this type of change. ?I think it will potentially make supporting
> mailing list problems more difficult since it might require debugging of
> mail messages to figure out why something did or didn't get through.
> So, I think it is an unnecessary complication and, if implemented, I'll
> punt any support requests to somebody else.
>
> And, in case it isn't clear, I don't see anyone else (except very
> occasionally fche) dealing with mailing list complaints so it would be a
> new role for someone to have to handle these issues. ?I have been
> dealing with postmaster mail for years so someone else would have to
> also start actively monitoring it.

Thank you for clarifying your position.

In summary:

* There is loose agreement that it would be a good thing to
  use DIR/mimekeep to allow users with multipart/alternative
  email to participate in mailing list discussions as long as
  they had MIME parts that matched the parts allowed on the
  list. After all, more project volunteers is a good thing.

* Unfortunately many of the mime parts we want to reject are
  also the default parts currently in use for sending
  patches, diffs, etc. Therefore if we don't outright reject
  emails with text/html parts then the application/octect-stream
  part (which we have to allow for Base64 encoded attached patches)
  of the spammers message will arrive on the list and that is
  not acceptable.

* Unfortunately the use of DIR/mimekeep and really any system
  that strips MIME parts would cause confusion amongst users
  and result in additional and unacceptable support load
  for postmaster (given the current volunteers).

It would seem to me that the position of overseers is
that the request to use DIR/mimekeep to enable posting of
multipart/alternative email with text/plain parts carries
with it an unacceptably high price.

Does that sound about right?

Cheers,
Carlos.