Re: axfr-clarify supporting unauthorized users

[Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>]

Dan Bernstein wrote:
> And, once these error-message extensions were added to the protocol,
> would we then have nitwits claiming that all the servers saying
> REFUSED were suddenly non-compliant because ``making it easier to
> detect common misconfigurations is an important aspect of
> interoperability''?

You objected to this clause of axfr-clarify on two grounds:

  (1) It forbids the behavior of djbdns, which you believe to be
      compliant with the existing (pre-clarification) specifications,
      and

  (2) It's not necessary for interoperability, and therefore should
      not be a MUST.

I disagreed with (2) on the grounds that interoperability is about
more than just the case where everything is working.  That particular
argument had no bearing on (1).  So no matter how slippery the slope,
my argument would never imply that conforming implementations of an
old standard would magically become non-conforming when a revision is
published.  (A conforming C89 compiler remains a conforming C89
compiler even if it is not a conforming C99 compiler.)

(As a separate point, I agree with other people that a TCP FIN was not
a reasonable implementation choice given the text in RFC 1034 and
1035, and thus djbdns's behavior here should not be considered a data
point for a clarification effort.  That argument bears on (1) but not
(2).)

I do not know of an IETF policy on ad hominem remarks, but perhaps it
should be discouraged for working group chairs to consider arguments
intermixed with personal slurs when gauging consensus.  That would
allow contributors to ignore abusive behavior such as Dan's without
worrying that doing so might affect the standards process.

--
to unsubscribe send a message to namedroppers-request@ops.ietf.org with
the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/>