Re: #1028 USEFOR 3.1.2 Date: Resolved, I think.

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <42C2D08B.2138@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>Seth Breidbart wrote:
> 
>> I agree it's odd.  I still think we should do it.
>[...]
>> "MUST NOT generate" because there's no reason to allow
>> generation

>Yesterday Charles wrote something in the direction of
>SHOULD NOT => permission, and now you apparently propose
>SHOULD NOT => allowed.  Do all here think that a SHOULD
>(NOT) is something like "please (not)", or worse that
>SHOULD NOT is just a shorthand for "of course you can" ?

>There is a reason to allow generation, legacy software.

No. You misunderstand the intention of our standards.

Legacy software does all sorts of things which we don't want them to do
any more.

Therefore, we write our standard so that those legacy implementations
become non-compliant (because that is a good carrot to encourage them to
be upgraded).

OTOH, of course, we so arrange things (by making transitional/fallback
arrangements where necessary) that the legacy software can continue to
interoperate at least for the medium term (long term, in some future
standard, we may outlaw some such things entirely, but that will be
somebody else's decision to take).

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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