Handling mailing list "From" rewriting

[Arsen Arsenović]

Hi!

Many mailing lists (including this one, it'd seem) do "From"-rewriting,
where they transform the "From" header of a mailing address to name the
mailing list rather than the sender.

For instance, if the "From" header is

From: "Arsen Arsenović" <ar...@aarsen.me>

... and I am emailing Gcc-help (gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org), then Mailman will
rewrite the "From" header to be:

From: "Arsen Arsenović via Gcc-help" <gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>

... before forwarding my email to subscribers.

This has two effects:

- 'mu' considers the name of "gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org" to be "Arsen
Arsenović via Gcc-help", and completes to that incorrect value
- Replying to this email cites "Arsen Arsenović via Gcc-help
<gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>" rather than "Arsen Arsenović
<ar...@aarsen.me>", with the "To" header being the mailing list, and
the original sender being in "Cc"

Is there some good solution to this issue? Where good means reliable
and local?

Personally, unfortunately, I've failed to come up with one. I thought
it may be best to do some postprocessing in 'mu' relying on List-Id
headers, but List-Id doesn't necessarily correspond to where the email
comes from, it'd seem.

Thanks in advance, have a lovely day!
--
Arsen Arsenović

[Dirk-Jan C. Binnema]

On Friday Nov 07 2025, 'Arsen Arsenović' via mu-discuss wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Many mailing lists (including this one, it'd seem) do "From"-rewriting,
> where they transform the "From" header of a mailing address to name the
> mailing list rather than the sender.
>
> For instance, if the "From" header is
>
> From: "Arsen Arsenović" <ar...@aarsen.me>
>
> ... and I am emailing Gcc-help (gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org), then Mailman will
> rewrite the "From" header to be:
>
> From: "Arsen Arsenović via Gcc-help" <gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>
>
> ... before forwarding my email to subscribers.
>
> This has two effects:
>
> - 'mu' considers the name of "gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org" to be "Arsen
> Arsenović via Gcc-help", and completes to that incorrect value

Yes, that's a little annoying.

> - Replying to this email cites "Arsen Arsenović via Gcc-help
> <gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>" rather than "Arsen Arsenović
> <ar...@aarsen.me>", with the "To" header being the mailing list, and
> the original sender being in "Cc"

> Is there some good solution to this issue? Where good means reliable
> and local?

Based on what this mailing-list (i.e., google groups) does, I guess the
goal of the rewriting is to make "reply" do the expected thing (of
replying through the mailing-list). And seems it succeeds at that
(looking at this reply, for instance.)

Also 'W' i.e,.wide-reply/reply-to-all seems to do the right thing.

But you want something different to happen?

Kind regards,
Dirk.

--
Dirk-Jan C. Binnema Helsinki, Finland
e:dj...@djcbsoftware.nl w:www.djcbsoftware.nl
gpg: 6987 9CED 1745 9375 0F14 DA98 11DD FEA9 DCC4 A036

[Arsen Arsenović]

Hi,

"Dirk-Jan C. Binnema" <djcb...@gmail.com> writes:

> Based on what this mailing-list (i.e., google groups) does, I guess the
> goal of the rewriting is to make "reply" do the expected thing (of
> replying through the mailing-list). And seems it succeeds at that
> (looking at this reply, for instance.)

I actually suspect that the reason is to make sure mail is deliverable
in spite of strict SPF/DKIM/DMARC policies some providers do. That's
certainly why we do it for Sourceware mailing lists (but not all of
them).

> Also 'W' i.e,.wide-reply/reply-to-all seems to do the right thing.
>
> But you want something different to happen?

Very interesting! It seems that I received your email with the right
'From' header. I wonder why, especially since you didn't Cc me.

Anyway, what wide-reply does is okay, in a sense, but not optimal.

Here's a nonspecific example of an email from Gcc-help, a mailing list
which *does* 'From'-rewriting:

From: jh--- via Gcc-help <gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Specifying different registers in inline asm
To: "Richard Earnshaw (foss)" <Richard....@arm.com>
Cc: gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2025 18:22:11 +0100 (5 hours, 55 minutes, 4 seconds ago)
Reply-To: j...@clesse.com
Message-Id: <6af0fcbae4a7522e...@clesse.com>
Flags: seen, list
Maildir: /mbox/Lists.GCC

... replying to this email produces a buffer with the following initial
contents:

To: jh--- via Gcc-help <gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>
Cc: "Richard Earnshaw (foss)" <Richard....@arm.com>, j...@clesse.com
Subject: Re: Specifying different registers in inline asm
From: "Arsen Arsenović" <ar...@aarsen.me>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:18:06 +0100
Message-ID: <86o6oxv...@aarsen.me>
In-Reply-To: <6af0fcbae4a7522e...@clesse.com>
--text follows this line--
jh--- via Gcc-help <gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org> writes:

(irrelevant content elided)

Note the 'To:' line picked up on the '... via ...' as the contact name
for gcc-help@, and that the cited author is jh--- via Gcc-help
<gcc-...@gcc.gnu.org>. These two are the issues I would like to fix.

Wide-replying does the right thing in the sense that a reply gets
delivered to all the right people, yes; but I manually have to fix up
the above for it to behave "right". I wonder if something can be done
about that.

Thanks, have a lovely day!
--
Arsen Arsenović

[Phillip Susi]

'Arsen Arsenović' via mu-discuss <mu-di...@googlegroups.com> writes:

> I actually suspect that the reason is to make sure mail is deliverable
> in spite of strict SPF/DKIM/DMARC policies some providers do. That's
> certainly why we do it for Sourceware mailing lists (but not all of
> them).

Aren't those enforced on the envelope sender address, not the From:
header?

[Dirk-Jan C. Binnema]

On Thursday Nov 20 2025, 'Arsen Arsenović' via mu-discuss wrote:

> Hi,

Yeah, I guess the current behavior is what I'd expect to happen. It
seems fine to me, even the "via" part.

But, it should still be possible to do something different, might be
worth checking `message-reply-to-function' and
`message-wide-reply-to-function' to manipulate how the replies are set
up-

Note, haven't used those myself, it's just what we inherit from Gnus.