On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 12:41, Fleischman, Eric wrote:
Specifically, when I first became associated with you all in 1992, the
RFCs of most IETF standards were incomplete and the reference
implementations (i.e., running code) were what was considered to be
normative.
I didn't get directly involved in the IETF until a few years after 1992
but I've never encountered an attitude from any old-timer that any
single reference implementation of any protocol could be considered as
"more normative" than the spec. Indeed, I recall lots of complaints in
the late 80's about specific commonly used implementations as being
broken in various ways.
The closest thing to that was more of a sense that the collective
behavior of the environment/ecosystem/community/... of interoperable
implementations present on the Internet, *considered as a whole*,
filled in gaps in the specs, and that when in doubt, you should ask a
bunch of implementers how they interpreted the spec.
I do recall a passing comment from Jeff Schiller -- probably in late
1988 or early 1989, but I may be off by a year in either direction --
that the IETF was attempting to move towards less wiggle room in the
specs -- in particular, describing higher-level behavior in addition to
packet layouts and the semantics of packet fields -- and I think that
was around the time of the Host Requirements RFC's (1122 and 1123).
So I'd split your statement in half: the specs are incomplete? Yes.
(And they always will be, because it's always possible that someone will
come along and find some dark corner or some unanticpated way to use
them).
But the "reference implementation" as normative? never.
- Bill
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