I think the worry is that Mail::Address will be patched to introduce quotes around phrases where the RFC requires them, which would mean that the format would become '"<>"' rather than '<>'. As I understand Brian, Debian already has a patch that does that, though I don't understand why Debian is patching a Perl module. It seems that the complainant should have posted the bug to rt.cpan.org.
The current qpsmtpd code is creating an object with an undefined address and a phrase of '<>', and phrases that contain angle brackets (or other specials) need to be quoted, according to RFC 822. So the fact that the format turns out as '<>' appears to be a bug in Mail::Address.
Unfortunately, Mail::Address->new('', '')->format is just an empty string rather than '<>'. But that makes sense, since no other address gets angle brackets added when the phrase part is empty. It looks like qpsmtpd should be using Mail::Address ->new('', '') to represent an empty address.
Thank you!
That makes perfect sense to me.
Matt.
