can you please explain *why* publishing conformance statements would be such a bad idea? I am not being cynical, I really want to understand the reasoning.
(I don't know Pete's reasons, but I suspect they're not dissimilar from my own. Which are ...)
The main problem with conformance languge is that conformance has a nasty way of becoming an end unto itself, and the *reasons* why conformance is desired get lost along the way. The result is technical compliance to a bunch of words on paper that don't provide an actual, useful, result like, say, insisting on interoperability does. For example, the X.400 email standards are all about conformance. Incredibly elaborate and picky conformance test suites can be, and have been, written for this stuff. So how is it that, after passing a truly massive test suite that checked every last little conformance detail in the specifications (and paying lots of $$$ for the privilege), our software then failed to interoperate in at least half a dozen different ways with another piece of software that as it happened had also just passed the exact same test suite? Heck, we couldn't even get the thing to properly negotiate a session to transfer messages. And once we got that working (in the process we ended up having to violate a couple of those test suite requirements) we were immediately lost in a thicket of differing interpretations of not just protocol fields but even the basic elements that comprise X.400 addresses. And this is supposed to be useful? As a moneymaker for software developers, maybe - you may rest assured the cost of all of this nonsense were passed on to our customers, many of whom were bound by various regulations and had no choice but to buy this crap - but as a way to get things to work, most assuredly not. And this trap is a lot easier to fall into than you might think. I've fallen into it myself - I once spent entirely too much time dithering about getting severe error handling "right" in a particular programming language implementation, completely losing sight of the fact that once an error this severe occurs the options are limited and the outcomes are so poor it just isn't that important that the rules are followed to the letter. It made a lot more sense on getting rid of the conditions that could cause an error.
And, for extra credit, what do you make of http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5996#section-4 (in my own backyard)?
Well, the section may be titled "Conformance Requirements" but the section is all about interoperability, not conformance. So that's fine in my book. Ned _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf