Re: New Version Notification for draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00.txt

[Joe Touch <touch@xxxxxxx>]

It's inefficient to repeat the phrase "X MUST be supported by any implementation that complies with this specification".

The phrase "X is REQUIRED", RECOMMENDED, or OPTIONAL corresponds to the incorrect English of "X is a MUST".

I.e., these are reasonable adjective forms of the adverbs MUST/MAY/SHOULD. Omitting these adjectives then requires authors to select their own adjective forms or to have to rewrite everything as an adverb.

IMO, if you want to drop anything, drop the MUST/MAY/SHOULD - directives of protocol specs should describe the spec, not the actions of the implementer.

Joe

On 8/12/2016 4:13 PM, Pete Resnick wrote:

On 11 Aug 2016, at 6:44, Stewart Bryant wrote:

Optional is useful in a requirements RFC.

Feature x is REQUIRED

Feature y is OPTIONAL

One last (and perhaps fruitless) attempt to keep this section and deprecate the adjectives:

Using REQUIRED and OPTIONAL results in exactly the problem of using passive voice anywhere: REQUIRED by whom? OPTIONAL for whom? If you say, "A MUST do X and B MAY do Y", it is perfectly clear which actor is responsible (and in network protocols there are inevitably at least 2). If you say "X is REQUIRED and Y is OPTIONAL", you'll end up needing more text to explain the actors and their roles.

Using REQUIRED and OPTIONAL is lazy. It makes specs less clear. They ought to be dropped.

pr
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Pete Resnick http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/
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