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

[Ed Gerck <egerck at nma.com>]

Dave Crocker wrote:

> At 04:58 PM 1/22/2002 -0800, Ed Gerck wrote:
> >Perhaps we all agree that standardization without some sort of conformance
> >verification is ineffective.
>
> The only problem with that assessment is 25 years of Internet experience,
> all of which was based of no conformance verification, but quite a bit of
> effectiveness.

Laissez-faire conformance verification is at odds with  Moore's law. (*)

> ps.  yes, yes.  individual implementors worry quite a lot about conformance
> verification.  however, the topic under discussion has to do with formal,
> community-based efforts, rather than individual actions.

The topic is about community-based efforts -- which can be much more objective.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

(*) Perhaps we agree that the reason for a standard to exist is to be used. So,
"some sort of conformance verification" always exists, even if it is just by
market forces.  The question (the part that you snipped off from my
paragraph) is how to *improve* upon conformance verification.