On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 08:56:21AM -0700, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews wrote:
> 
> > Anything that isn't tested Will be broken.  We can't fix that in the
> > protocol, but we can fix it by adding tests :)
>
> We can also fix it by deleting unnecessary things, which is the best and
> most reliable way to avoid bugs. That's why I think this is the right
> approach.

I'm a big fan of that idiom too, but doing something half-assed is the
worst of both worlds.

If we aren't going to have a functional protocol interface that lets
both the client and server unambiguously communicate what was agreed
to (and query that if/when needed) - then we should just drop the
process of ToS agreement from the protocol altogether, rather than
doing some sort of legal theatre lite where the client blindly sends
a hard coded "sure, whatever you say, whenever you say it" flag.

We could just provide a directory entry (which could even be optional)
that indicates where the terms can be found, and let those terms say
that any other use of the service indicates acceptance of those terms
(just like pretty much every other network service in existence does
without needing to kludge a contentless 'accept' bit into the protocol).


Making the client send back a hard coded "open sesame" string is of
dubious legal effect, but has all the same problems of being cruft
that people will need to implement, but that absolutely nobody will
test unless the test servers force them to.  There will still be
bugs, but there won't be any actual value add to encourage even some
people to care about it being done right, or being there at all.


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