On Mon, Sep 10, 2001 at 03:24:44PM -0500, Jose Manuel Arronte Garcia wrote:
oh yeah!
And now I should take the risk over the 64 (at least) RFCs published on
april 1st, if is a "serious" or a "humour" RFC...
Or would you advise NOT to believe in any RFC published on april 1st at
all?
For us people who don't have ths custom of the april's fool day, is
very, but very unpleasant to find a joke instead of a serious network
reference as in a RFC.
"RFC" means "Request for comment". Some RFC's are experimental; some
are full standards, some represent bad ideas that have since been
completely abandoned. One of the major problems which we have is
people assuming that just because it has an "RFC" label, that it's
automatically something Serious That Must Be Followed.
You need to look at an RFC, and examine its standards status, and even
if it is a full standard, decide whether or not it's applicable to
you. Assuming that all RFC's are Serious Network Reference is a
really, really, really, really bad idea. And if April Fool's RFC's
help dispell this aura, and if they help trap unwary companies when
customers insert April Fool's RFC's into RFP's, and to see whether or
not the company tries to assert that their product implements the
Telnet Randomly-Lose option. It's a really good "is-the-company-clueless
test". :-)
- Ted