This thread is offtopic so I'm changing the title --- Paul Hoffman / IMC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Your generalization is cute, but wrong. Some specs > get ignored, but > NNTP is not one of them. NNTP community has been > working for years on > a revision. The fact that they haven't finished is a > comment on the > NNTP community, not on the IETF, which keeps > prodding them to finish. As an implementer, there is no difference between an abandoned spec and one whose status is in limbo because the "community has been working for years on a revision". I find it disingenious to blame the faceless "NNTP community" when the fact is the RFC is an IETF spec. I wouldn't expect the W3C to blame the "XML query community" for the lack of advancement of XQuery. > To the best of my knowledge, no one from your > employer is > participating, or even following the Working Group, > even though you > are a major user of the spec. I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything. I don't represent Microsoft on this list (that's why I'm not posting from my Microsoft email address) so I don't speak for it here and even if I did this doesn't change the fact that the NNTP spec is woefully outdated. > >How to deal with errata to specs is a problem that > no > >one has really figured out how to solve yet. Remove > >the log from your own eye and all that... > > Wrong. RFCs have errata collected in a single place. > See > <http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata.html>, which is > linked from the RFC > Editor's home page. Ideally, a spec should never change after being produced but since it is created by humans there are bugs which oftentimes just have to be fixed. To me the IETF approach seems very problematic compared to the W3C approach [which also has its issues which is why I state no one has really figured out how to solve this yet]. 1.) IETF approach: I go to an RFC page, read it diligently and implement it as specified. However there are errata which are dumped in some database on a separate site which isn't even linked to so they are undiscoverable. Some other implementation finds the errata page due to its developers being savvy with the IETF way and implements spec + errata. We can't interop with each other and our customers & support folks don't know why since we implement the RFC as specced. 2.) W3C approach: I go to a W3C recommendation page, read it diligently and implement it as specified. Later on there are errata which live on a separate but linked site. Eventually the old spec is replaced by old spec + errata folded in. The problems with this approach are similar to the IETF case before the errata are folded in. Afterwards there is some confusion when the in now turns out there are separate revs of the spec which have the same URL and version number/namespace name (e.g. XML 1.0 second edition, XML Schema second edition, etc). Both of these approaches have their issues which I've had to deal with as an implementer of Web specifications. To me the W3C approach tries to strike a good balance while the IETF approach just sounds like a recipe for lack of interoperability. ===== THINGS TO DO IF I BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD #222 I reserve the right to execute any henchmen who appear to be a little too intelligent, powerful, or devious. However if I do so, I will not at some subsequent point shout "Why am I surrounded by these incompetent fools?!" __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com
