Re: Fwd: Re: IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification

[Theodore Tso <tytso at mit.edu>]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 01:15:28PM -0800, Marshall T. Rose wrote:
>
> stef - i think we can agree that i'm not an apolgist for the company in
> question. however, i don't think you fully appreciate the consequences of
> your suggestion.
> 
> the ietf does standardization, it does not do interoperability testing,
> conformance certification, or protocol policing. we rely on other
> organizations and the market for those tasks.

I agree with the general sentiment, although I'll note that apparently
the ISO *does* send some kind of whiny letter to the IAB/IESG whenever
we engage in "felony violations of the ASN.1 spec", to the point where
when the Kerberos wg was exploring playing fast and loose with the
ASN.1 specs to solve an interoperability problem while providing I18N
support in the Kerberos V5 protocol, the response the wg got back from
the IAB/IESG was, "please don't".

So apparently the ISO letters (although I've never seen them myself)
is annoying enough that it's capable of influencing our standards
behaviour.  Maybe someone should just change some of the words and
then send it off to Redmond?  1/2 :-)

							- Ted