FW: Email or Something Else

I agree that conflicting is not a bad thing or indeed that some of the
requirements are mutually exclusive, although they may be.

I also agree with your points about the need to transport large messages
with due regard for bandwidth limited and low functionality recipients.
This would be a key requirement for me in any future messaging system.
As would the ability to natively transport binary data.

Kind regards
David
Strategic Systems

-----Original Message-----
From: Hadmut Danisch [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: 21 February 2004 15:10
To: Keith Moore
Cc: David W Morgan; [email protected]
Subject: Re: Email or Something Else

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 05:38:11PM -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> > Chris, I think that you may a point.  We certainly seem to be
starting
> > to define an extensible service, with many conflicting requirements.
> 
> that's why it's unhelpful to speak in terms of "requirements" at
> this stage.


On the contrary. I believe we are getting somewhere near to
"requirements". 

And I do not see a disadvantage in "conflicts". What has been posted
to the list so far, have been "wishes": Some want to transport large
messages, others want to have a service suitable for low bandwidth
portable devices. Both are not really requirements, they are wishes.
Fulfilling any of these wishes is trivial and does not need such a
working group. Fulfilling _both_ of these wishes is a requirement.

And these wishes do not really conflict. A conflict exists if someone
proves that fulfilling one wish necessarily violates the other wish. 
But that's not the case.

What's the conclusion?

We found a "requirement": The service must be able to both transport
large messages and service low bandwidth portable devices. This is
where we can start do design and engineer a service to fulfill this
requirement. (e.g. negotiate maximum message size or transport a
handle for pulling the attachment instead transporting all contents at
once). 

If we find such pairs of wishes which seem to "conflict" on a first
glance, we should be happy, because that's the stuff which
"requirements" are made of. 

:-)

So we should take care to precisely list all these pairs of 
"conflicting" wishes, because we will lateron need this list to 
give reasons for why we have designed something that way and not this
way. 

regards
Hadmut