ietf-nntp "Common NNTP Extensions" document updated

[Richard Letts]

On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Vincent Archer wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 01, 1997 at 02:53:50PM +0000, Jon Ribbens wrote:
> 
> I'm not advocating the removal of the command, just the part that mandate
> the existence of this command in the protocol. Any server implementation
> is quite welcome to support it, just like any server implementation is
> welcome to support XHDR, XOVER or even MODE.
> 
> The RFC will then provide "If the server implements NEWNEWS, it will
> behave like this..."
> 
> What I'm saying (and no more) is that, if the spec require a server to
> implement NEWNEWS to conform, then we'll have lots of non-compliant
> servers, and people will still refuse to have NEWNEWS enabled on their
> site. 
> 
> I ask again: Do we want the RFC to reflect actual use, or an ideal net?

RFC document working code. NEWNEWS works, and should be documented. 
I use NEWNEWS every day of the week, therefore this is actual use.

IMHO it should NOT be marked optional; sure a server can administratively
decline to support a protocol feture (eg VRFY, EXPN in RFC821) but a
conforming implementation MUST implement them and give the administrator
the choice about disabling them.

If you mark a featire as optional, then those people who do not understand
the Internet standards process will miss the feature out of their
software, making it less functional. if the company whose product is
missing the feature is (say) Microsoft and it ships as a product then
you've caused the Internet to become a little less functional. 

I've been though this before, with DHCP, where a few extra lines of code
would have made DHCP clients for Windows95 support BOOTP. because the
standard said backward-support for BOOTP was optional I had to work damned
hard to get DHCP working everywhere on the network.

Richard Letts
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