Re: [arch-d] I-D Action: draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-08.txt

["Bless, Roland (TM)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Toerless,

one quick comment inline.

On 15.07.22 at 06:18 Toerless Eckert wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 11:09:09PM +0200, Bless, Roland (TM) wrote:
>> Your draft says:
>> "Time and experience shows that negative consequences to interoperability
>> accumulate over time if implementations apply the robustness principle. This
>> problem originates from an assumption implicit in the principle that it is
>> not possible to effect change in a system the size of the Internet. It
>> assumes that once a protocol specification is published, changes that might
>> require existing implementations to change are not feasible."
> If i understand Martins draft argument correctly, then it is somewhere
> around the lines that an underspecified protocol is bad and can not
> simply excuse itself by saying "just add the robustness principle to
> fill in the gaps". And the reason for that is that the robustness
> principle itself is underspecified. It forgets to mention that
> there is no guaranteed interoperable result when different implementers
> apply it against the same spec.
I never thought that the Robustness Principle claimed to _guarantee_ 
interoperability
in any way. IMHO it is a relative statement, i.e., if  one follows the 
Robustness Principle
chances are higher to get interoperable implementations. However, it is 
correct that
especially the "be liberal in what you accept" part may lead to 
different results
when different implementers apply it to the same spec.

Regards,
  Roland
>
> If that is about right, then maybe text like that previous sentence would
> help make it clearer what the intention of the text in Martin's draft is.
> Otherwise it is either me being too stupid to be an approved reader of
> the draft, or the draft is underspecified for me to understand it.
>
> In any case, we (IETF) are a lot more authoritative to drive better
> specifications than better implementations, so this whole discussion
> even into this degree of nitpicking is hopefully useful to our work
> product in the future and not just thought inspiring for those who
> like to quarrel about it.
>
> Cheers
>      Toerless