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

[Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 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...

Exactly.  It is important that legacy software continue to *work*, because
there is a lot of it around, and even with the best intentions, getting
even a large fraction of it upgraded will take a while.  But there is no
reason to declare it compliant, and indeed every reason not to.

Backward compatibility is a technical issue, not a compliance issue.  It
does not require us to permanently endorse every old mistake, only to
provide a transition path, so that software can move toward future full
compliance while remaining interoperable with the old mistakes for now. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx