OSS wrote:
Glenn Maynard wrote:My read of RFC-822 says that "Reply-To" represents where replies are to be sent rather than an arbitrary field for putting identifying information in.Your name in the From: header is for the benefit of others to identify you, not for you to put arbitrary metadata in. I don't care what your u@h is--I've used separate usernames for lists in the past, myself, butI made sure that the name was reasonable: "Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org>".(I've stopped doing that, because it backfired: the only effect it hadwas that spam spiders picked up all of the variants, and I started gettingseveral copies of every spam. Dur.)4.4.3. REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TOThis field provides a general mechanism for indicating any mailbox(es) to which responses are to be sent. <snip>I use OSS for all open source server lists (arbitrary distinction in this case) and restrict mail accepted for that account to just the lists. They could be sending junk, unless it is sent through the list I never see it (yes it violates the doctrine of not losing mailbut I'm ok with that for list addresses) Since its a problem I'll have a new address set-up for here.
4.4.1. FROM / RESENT-FROM
This field contains the /identity/ of the person(s) who wished
this message to be sent. (snip, my emphasis).
(It seems odd that you describe the 'Reply-to' field, seeing as you
didn't use one).
It is the convention in most mailing-lists, newsgroups, etc. connected to Free software that you identify yourself by your name, not some pseudonym or 'handle'. I don't pretend to speak for Debian, but I haven't seen a single person (apart from yourself :) that doesn't use their real name on this mailing list. I would therefore surmise that it is the convention here to use your real name.
No-one minds which email address you use (this is for the computers to worry about); the objection is that the name you attach to it (the bit outside the <>s, which is to let humans know who you are) should be your real name, not the meaningless 'OSS'. At any rate, very few spammers keep track of the name attached to an email address, so what is the benefit of using 'OSS'?
If you're worried about keeping your name a secret, bear in mind that you've let it slip at least one on this list :)
-- Lewis Jardine IANAL, IANADD