[ih] "The Internet runs on Proposed Standards"

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 05-Dec-22 08:42, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> It appears that Jack Haverty via Internet-history <jack at 3kitty.org> said:
>> operating between my keyboard/screen and yours.  It could be all
>> Standards of some ilk, or it could all be Proprietary.   It might
>> conform to the spec, or have some zero-day flaw.  How do you tell?
> 
> IETF standards are all about interoperation.  I don't have to care
> what's inside your black box so long as it talks to my black box
> using standard protocols.
> 
> I realize this argument gets fuzzy around the edges, but for the stuff
> I do like e-mail, if the other end doesn't speak SMTP as described in
> RFCs over TCP and IP as described in RFCs, it's not going to get any
> mail delivered.

Exactly. And whether those RFCs are Proposed Standard, Draft Standard
or Internet Standard turns out to be completely irrelevant. There's
a fairly large set of RFCs that need to be followed quite accurately;
the permissionless innovation that I mentioned can't duck that.

      Brian