Re: 3730 <poll> Text Change Proposal
Andrew Sullivan <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.ietf.provreg |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On Tue, Aug 16, 2005 at 04:02:07PM -0400, Edward Lewis wrote: > > The change confuses me. Instead of relaxing from MUST to SHOULD, the > change eliminates any "standards" words. I think others have pointed out that any relaxing from MUST will not make existing code incompatible with the resulting document. I don't want to attribute anything to Scott (since I have no knowledge in this matter -- or in any other, some would argue!), but I have a suspicion that the use of "can" instead of any of the magic standards words is a feature, not a bug. I think it's a good idea, because it neatly sidesteps the problems we've identified in the use of the poll queue, and doesn't potentially embroil us in other standards issues. > The code base we have currently conforms to the "OLD" spec. We don't > have a problem with it, hence we are reluctant to want to see the > spec changed (in a way that is "not backwards compatible"). Not so I can understand a desire to avoid changes that cause incompatibilities (even if this isn't such a case). But I think this is a weak plank on which to build an argument that the protocol needs to remain unchanged. The whole point of PROPOSED STANDARD after all is that we're not completely committed to that design, precisely because we're aware that we might not have had all the operational experience necessary to get things quite right when folks were first designing the protocol. That isn't to say I think we should embrace change for its own sake; I prefer to leave the protocol alone, to the extent possible, and use extensions where we can, even if the result is not the most elegant approach when considered in isolation. I'm just made awful nervous by a suggestion that we shouldn't fix things we find need fixing (if we do -- and I recognise the jury is still out) because we have some installed base. It'll be much harder to fix things later, with a bigger installed base. A -- ---- Andrew Sullivan 204-4141 Yonge Street Afilias Canada Toronto, Ontario Canada <[email protected]> M2P 2A8 +1 416 646 3304 x4110