On 12/02/2013 10:04 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
On 11/29/2013 12:22 AM, Roberto Peon wrote:
The only reason to specify a must-implement is to increase interop; if
mandating a codec does not increase the amount of interop, why do it?
If the base specification does not provide enough information for
basic interoperability, what is the benefit in standardizing it?
An alternative that I believe has already been mentioned is to
standardize /both/, but separately.
Under two different names, which then lets the market decide on
whether either will succeed.
Letting the market decide amongst competing choices used to be
something the IETF did more commonly. One of the more colorful
examples was SNMP vs. CMOT.
I prefer to remember (not fondly) SNMPv2U vs SNMPv2*.
What the market told us at that time, *very* loudly, was that there
would be no massive deployment of a properly secured version of SNMP
until the IETF reached a decision.
The IETF eventually reached a decision (SNMPv3). I don't know if it
eventually mattered that much; SNMP's grand ambitions had been overtaken
by events.