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Re: [hybi] Adding clarification regarding future revisions (Was: Proposed way forward for WebSockets)

Joe Hildebrand <joe.hildebrand@webex.com> Wed, 28 July 2010 11:54 UTC

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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:54:23 +0200
From: Joe Hildebrand <joe.hildebrand@webex.com>
To: Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
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Thread-Topic: [hybi] Adding clarification regarding future revisions (Was: Proposed way forward for WebSockets)
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Subject: Re: [hybi] Adding clarification regarding future revisions (Was: Proposed way forward for WebSockets)
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On 7/27/10 6:29 PM, "Jamie Lokier" <jamie@shareable.org> wrote:

> Concluding:
> 
>   - *Using* version numbers and user-agent strings instead of
>     explicit feature checks is an anti-pattern because it blocks
>     updates to those numbers and strings and forces them to lie.
> 
>   - But *not providing them* is an anti-pattern because it
>     prevents workarounds and thus blocks deployment of new features.

There is precedent for this.  In XMPP, we have a version number, which we
originally set to 1.0 in order to signal support for the standard version,
rather than the pre-standard version.  We defined a version policy, but have
successfully fought off all attempts to change the version number by
providing other feature negotiation mechanisms.  It's still nice to know
it's there if we need it, however.

The text from 3920bis (http://bit.ly/9eX8Bu) could be used as a template.

-- 
Joe Hildebrand
(as individual)

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