Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
The only difference between "SHOULD" and "MAY" is that the implementor /
deployer needs a good excuse to not implement / employ a "SHOULD."
That's not the same as "IGNORE".
But that's a big difference. I think some people are being cavalier
about the "good excuse" part, and that's where I have a problem.
RFC2119 is not unclear on this point.
Correct again, it is not unclear. It says it very clear. I don't
know why you wish to ignore Tony's I-D reinforcing this concept and
optional implementation:
SHOULD, RECOMMENDED: The words "ought", "encouraged" and "suggest
strongly" can be used to connote something that is strongly
urged.
There is no possibility to interpret SHOULD as nothing else as an
optional implementation and thus can be ignored. Of course, the
presumptions are:
- Faith in your engineering peers,
- Due Diligence decision to decide to ignore it, and
- understanding if it was implemented, it could be ignored by
consumers.
If that is not enough, we have a huge deployment history where SHOULDs
was ignored and implemented as an option for operators, and we have
history where a SHOULD was changed to a MUST and it caused problems.
If your interpretation was correct, this change would not have been
necessary.
IMV, the evidence is quite clear that SHOULD has no MUST-IMPLEMENT
concept and never had. If people read it that way, it probably did
not cause a problem. So no big deal. But if they expected others to
MUST-IMPLEMENT a SHOULD and broke down because of that expectation,
then I suggest they didn't read RFC2119 correctly.
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