I think you're overgeneralizing. My experience is that judicious use of SHOULD seems to make both protocols and protocol specifications simpler; trying to nail everything down makes them more complex. Keith On Aug 30, 2011, at 9:51 AM, Eric Burger wrote: > I would offer that working groups that say to do something that may or may not hold in foreseen or unforeseen circumstances is most likely working on a protocol that is way too complex and is begging for interoperability problems. What ever happened to building simple, point-solution protocols that followed the hour-glass and end-to-end principles, and then building your complex protocols out of them? > > On Aug 29, 2011, at 11:11 PM, Keith Moore wrote: > >> On Aug 29, 2011, at 10:44 PM, Eric Burger wrote: >> >>> I would offer that ANY construction of SHOULD without an UNLESS is a MAY. >> >> The essential beauty of SHOULD is that it gets specification writers and working groups out of the all-too-common rathole of trying to anticipate and nail down every exceptional case. >> >> Keith >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ietf mailing list >> Ietf@xxxxxxxx >> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf