The decision from the jabber meeting was to keep it, thinking that we
could drop it later if it turns out not to be used. Paul correctly
points out that we could just as well drop it, and put it in later if it
turns out to be needed.
I had debated whether to make the following point, upon reading the jabber log,
so I'm happy it came up on its own:
Keeping a questionable feature carries a significant cost: Each feature serves
as an incremental barrier to adoption, both in terms of development effort and
in terms of testing and certification effort. Worse, after the first few
features, the increments increase. In other words the aggregate cost seems to
be something like exponential.
It is far easier to later add new features that are later deemed required, than
it is to later drop features that are initially deemed questionable.
(This, of course, is all in the classic spirit of good system design that looks
for what can be removed, rather than what can be added.)
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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