At 9:55 AM -0400 7/8/99, Paul Koning wrote:
I'd put it more strongly than that. Any implementation of any
protocol is defective if it crashes when presented with ANY message,
including messages deliberately and maliciously constructed. It's
always allowed to complain, or toss the message, or stuff like that,
but "you sent me an invalid message" will never excuse a crash.
Crashing is right out. But misinterpretation and wandering off into
some odd corner mumbling to oneself isn't crashing, but equally
useless. Protocol changes that provoke massive misbehavior on the
part of deployed implemenations aren't a real good idea.
If implementors don't squawk, or at least do no worse than shrug
indifferently, I'm at ease.