[OTR-users] some questions

Nathan J. Williams nathanw at MIT.EDU
Tue Jan 2 00:05:43 EST 2007


Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> writes:

> Of course, in such circumstances you must simply get as close as
> possible.  The principle itself still holds, though.

The principle leads to disaser when, years down the road, you find
yourself locked into "liberal" meanings of the protocol - even when a
tighter reading of whatever specification you have would be more
useful - beacuse most users, who shouldn't have to care about this
stuff, will rightly complain when a formally in-spec change breaks the
behavior they've come to expect.

I think the "be liberal in what you accept" principle should have been
shot and buried when it stopped being possible to harass the authors
of all of the software that you use at the next USENIX.

        - Nathan



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