From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Fri Feb 08 2002 - 12:50:39 CST
Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk):
>Oh dear! You do not seem to see the difference between the words "insert"
>and "modify".
Oh, dear! You do not seem to understand that "modify" means "to change",
as in "changes the meaning of". Yes, dear, inserting a Sender header
changes the meaning of the From header in the message. And in this case,
the injector is also changing the meaning of the Sender and From headers
from what is defined in our draft. So "modified" is quite accurate,
despite your claims to the contrary.
>>I'm still looking for the part where an injector is not allowed to change
>>an existing Sender header. Is it this wimpy note that you think prohibits
>>it:
> It is in the words you have just quoted above.
Oh, dear, I see that you have no comprehension of the meaning of the IETF
standard phrase "SHOULD NOT". You seem to have some strange idea that it
means "to prohibit". What part of the phrase "there may exist valid
reasons in particular circumstances when the particular behavior is
acceptable or even useful" do you think means "you are not permitted to?"
Is that the sticking point in this discussion, YOU think that SHOULD NOT
is a prohibition while I know it is not? YOU think that what needs to be
prohibited already is, while I know it is not? Is THAT why it looks like
you are in favor of allowing broken behaviour?
Perhaps you need to understand the difference between "SHOULD NOT" and
"MUST NOT", only one of which is a prohibition.
>All signficant differences between my private draft and the latest
>published one have been posted to this list,
Yes, in the form "I'm changing the draft to say X", usually in at least
three different versions over a several week period. But a LOT of the
changes appear under the comment "I'm cleaning up some wording and sending
the draft to the IETF" and we get to see these changes when you get around
to letting us see them. THEN we spend a lot of time discussing how the
changes you made by yourself aren't really what this group wants after
all, after reading the entire draft just to find them.
>If you are now saying that I should reissue the complete draft every time
>I alter a single paragraph, then I suppose that could be done, but I don't
>suppose the IETF would welcome two drafts being published every week.
I don't give a flying fig if the IETF doesn't like a new draft appearing
every five frigging minutes, if that is how often it is changed. It is
none of their damn business how often the working draft we are discussing
changes. If they don't like us making changes then they should disband the
group now, since it is our job to come up with the final standard from the
discussion, and that means there will be changes.
What I do mind is this repeated mantra from you that "the draft doesn't
say that" when I quote from the last public copy. I've gone to the effort
to make sure I have the latest copy, and then you dismiss discussion
because MY copy isn't right anymore. YOUR copy has changed, YOU are
arguing from the basis of what YOUR private copy says, and the rest of us
are left trying to figure out exactly what your copy says.
> But there are indeed quite a handful of small changes accumulated by now,
>so maybe I shall put up an intermediate snapshot on the Landfield site
>within the next day or so.
Somewhere you have a file that contains the current draft as you've
modified it based on the discussion or at your personal whim or on
whatever criteria you use to change it. I don't want "intermediate
snapshots" of that data, I want access to THAT DATA so when YOU say the
draft says one thing, I can see if it really does, and I can actually
determine if there are side effects from other parts. As it stands now, it
is a waste of time even reading the "current draft", since only you and
God knows what has changed since then. And at this point in time, to find
out what you've changed we would have to go back through every email from
you to this group for the last three months to see where you might have
said "I've changed this" and then maybe "I've changed it back...". God
forbid I miss one change, because you'll ridicule me in public again for
not having the most current version.
Now, it is right that you send email announcing changes to the list,
so don't stop doing that. But for people who don't pay attention to every
thread in this group, and who don't actively maintain a personal copy
echoing every change you announce, the ACTUAL draft should be available
online. That's just common sense. This three months or more between
updates is just ridiculous and is a waste of everyone's time.
If Kent cannot provide you with a place to put the current draft so we can
all get access to it, I can. You let me know that you need it, and I'll
create an account where you can ftp the file after you change it and make
it available on my webserver. If lack of access to technology is the
problem here, we can solve that. If it's just that you don't want to
update things more than once every three months, we cannot solve this.