Re: #481, was: WGLC: p7 MUSTs

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

On 2013-06-30 21:46, Alex Rousskov wrote:
> On 06/30/2013 10:48 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
>> On 2013-06-09 20:49, Alex Rousskov wrote:
>>> If you say "server MUST NOT send X", the proxy becomes responsible for
>>> not forwarding X. If you say "server MUST NOT generate X", the proxy
>>> forwarding behavior is not restricted by that specific requirement. When
>>> you say "request MUST NOT have X", the specs become ambiguous: some will
>>> claim that a proxy forwarding X is in violation and some will claim that
>>> the requirement is not applicable to proxies.
>
>> The trouble is that what you're asking for a change in requirements, and
>> that most definitively is *not* an editorial change.
>
> Whether polishing how these ambiguous requirements are worded actually
> changes those requirements depends on whether the reader believes that
> the proxy must police the given aspect of the message. Some readers may
> indeed decide that your polishing is not editorial in nature, depending
> on how you change the specs. The very fact that you suspect there will
> be protocol changes essentially implies that the current requirements
> are ambiguous and ought to be fixed.
>
>
>> As such, I'm not
>> too enthusiastic to make these kind of changes without feedback from the
>> working group.
>
> On the other hand, it is difficult to provide feedback without seeing
> the changes.

Well, you could make a concrete change proposal.

>> Do people agree that these requirements need to be rephrased? Do we have
>> concrete proposals about *how* to change them?
>
> FWIW, I do: Reword them to name the actor (client or server, usually
> obvious) and use "generate" instead of "send". When that default does
> not seem appropriate to you or others, let's discuss!

I don't think that it's sufficient to do that. What you propose is to 
erase the current language that defines validity of the message format 
and replace it by something else. I don't think we should do that. We 
*can* discuss clarifying what that means for the various actors, though.

Best regards, Julian