+1
I think SHOULD and RECOMMENDED should both be used when there is a strong suggestion that implementations comply with the following statement unless there are reasons not to.
Where I think it is time to go beyond 2119 is that we can distinguish two circumstances:
SHOULD is the preferred term when the reasons are objective, e.g. certain platforms don't support green flidgets.
RECOMMENDED is the preferred term when the reasons are subjective or subject to change. I can recommend AES but only on the basis of current knowledge.
I really don't see hotlinks from other institutions to RFC 2119 as any problem at all. RFC 2119 will not change even if the IETF updates it. A document that references 2119 for normative language will continue to do so unless reissued with a new RFC number.
On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Doug Barton <dougb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In English as it is commonly spoken "recommended," and "should" do indeed mean different things. Arguably it's unfortunate that 2119 conflated them, but that's the landscape we're living in.
So if the question is, "How do we improve the normative language in RFCs?" we should probably be thinking along the lines of giving more details about the conditions related to the things should/recommended apply to. I think it was Brian that said a while back that there should never be a SHOULD in a doc without an accompanied "unless ..." that spells out when the SHOULD can safely not be followed. It's not hard to imagine a similar guideline for "RECOMMENDED, because ..." that explains why something is recommended, and ideally also spells out the consequences if it is not done.
The idea being that 10 years from now a document can stand on its own as the repository of information about the topic it describes without having to fall back on WG discussions, anecdotes, etc. Another way to look at it is to ask the question, "Does this document have everything necessary for someone to create an interoperable implementation from scratch?"
thoughts?
Doug
Website: http://hallambaker.com/