[ih] "The Internet runs on Proposed Standards"
Brian E Carpenter
brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com
Sun Dec 4 11:55:06 PST 2022
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
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