Re: SHOULD vs MUST (was Re: Review of draft-ietf-geopriv-http-location-delivery-07)

I think I'm essentially agreeing with Eric Rescorla here, but perhaps  
phrasing it differently may help.

On Sat Jun 21 14:31:03 2008, Lawrence Conroy wrote:
> I had read 2119 to mean that a MUST was unconditional
> - do this or be non-complaint.

That's a reasonable assessment, given RFC 2119.

> Do you believe that MUST can have an "unless" clause?

I think that any MUST X unless Y can essentially be rephrased as one  
of "MUST (X or Y)", or "MUST (X or Y); SHOULD X". Lacking context on  
geopriv, it sounds like one of these (and it doesn't matter which).

> Doesn't this mean that any SHOULD with an explicit "unless" will
> need to be changed into a MUST - could you expand on this, please?

Again, I lack context here, but if the intent is as above, then they  
may do.

A SHOULD X unless Y essentially means "SHOULD (X or Y)" - as Eric  
says, this is probably not what the intent is, although in the case  
of TLS authentication it might be a reasonable course of action. I  
have to admit that if I read a "SHOULD X unless Y", given the usual  
English meaning, I'd read it as the same as "MUST X unless Y", but  
Eric's quite correct in pointing out the difference.

A final point is that actually phrasing it as "MUST X or Y" is  
problematic since English lacks the possibility of parenthesis for  
precendence - hence a stronger binding, such as MUST X unless Y, is  
preferable.

Dave.
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