At 9:59 -0400 5/16/12, Barry Leiba wrote:
It's probably worth having a discussion of all of that, and seeing whether there's some possibility of developing a rough community consensus on what we might-could-maybe-oughta-should do.
What I've run into, a couple of times, in the past few years are customer documents, such as RFP (request for proposals) that ask about compliance with RFC documents. In that role it doesn't really matter whether the RFC 2119 words are written one way or another, the pain is that RFCs generally do not define what it means to be compliant.
Granted the RFC series is not intended to be (all) requirements documents nor standards documents against which compliance can be judged. I am not saying the RFC series is deficient in the role it is intended to play. But if there is a discussion on the topic of the RFC 2119 words, I'd encourage giving thought to appeasing those that want documents against which compliance can be judged.
Perhaps a sub-series of RFC documents can be tagged for compliance applicability, written in way that testing of requirements is possible, and so on. In such a sub-series, special-meaning words would matter. In all other documents, all words would "revert" to their natural meanings. E.g., SHOULD would be the same as "ought to", MUST would be the same as "it has to be" and so on.
-- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Edward Lewis NeuStar You can leave a voice message at +1-571-434-5468 2012...time to reuse those 1984 calendars!