Mark Nottingham wrote:
> some people will undoubtedly ignore the mU flag; that's
> OK too, as long as they know what responsibility they're taking on
> (i.e., they've opened up the box and have voided the warranty).
How should an intermediary like PubSub, Google, Feedster,
Technorati, etc. respond when a mU element is found in an entry?
Should it be ignored and the entry forwarded to the subscriber or
included in a search results feed? Or, should all entries with mU elements
be discarded by intermediaries? How can the intermediary know if this is a
reasonable thing to do? Isn't it possible that the mU element might require
something in the feed that is external to the entry that matched the query
filter? Or, is it possible that an mU element could have an effect on the
processing of more than one entry? Thus, if an entry that contained such an
element was inserted into a stream of other entries from other feeds, might
this mU element cause "damage" to the other entries? Should there be two
types of mU? (i.e. intermediary-must-understand and client-must-understand)
If mU is specific to processor type, should we provide a more general method
of specifying who must-understand? If so, what is the extensibility model
for the definition of mU scope?
More questions can be delivered on demand. In any case, it seems
like there isn't time to finish this discussion.
bob wyman
