ietf-nntp LIST EXTENSIONS

[Russ Allbery]

Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:

> After re-reading the LIST EXTENSIONS text, I'd like to propose the
> following change to section 5.3.2:

> old:

> "It is not required that the client issues this command before attempting
> to make use of any extension."

> new:

> "Clients SHOULD issue this command before attempting to make use of any
> extension."

I'm afraid I still really don't see the point of this, particularly for
extensions that are nearly universally implemented.  This would reduce the
compliance of basically every existing client to conditional, even when
they would otherwise be fine, and client authors are going to look at that
and go "why?"

I don't understand what the benefit is.  I mean, people have said things
in the past about how it makes sure that security-related extensions
aren't used unless they're advertised, but I don't see what problem in
practice is caused by this.

What's wrong with trying the extension and getting an error code?  NNTP
has worked that way since the invention of the protocol, so it's clearly
not actually broken....

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>