Subject: [Syslog] Forward compatibility

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 11:39:44 -0500

Rainer wrote:
I am an IETF freshman. Anyhow, I often read that the IETF was driven
by
"rough consensus and running code". I say "was", because my impression
is that this is no longer the case. I would prefer it were...

While the IETF has increased its theoretical discussions, I think a
major part of the problem the IETF faces today is "running code". The
problem is that implementors insist on **backwards** compatibility
with **their** running code. Backwards compatibility is fine when
there is a great deal of commonality between existing implementations.
As Rainer has pointed out, that just doesn't exist.

We need to focus on **forward** compatibility - defining a standard
that implementors can move forward toward so there is increased
commonality, vendor neutrality, and interoperability.

If we keep trying for backwards compatibility to a wide range of
incompatible implementations, then we might as well go home now.

David Harrington
[email-masked]

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From: "Rainer Gerhards" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 18:34:39 +0100

David,

I agree with your argument. My point (obviously not properly conveyed)
was that I would prefer if *new* efforts would be turned into "running
code" and the lessons learned be applied to the drafts. While
implementing, you detect a lot of inconsistencies...

Rainer

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of David B Harrington
> Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 5:40 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [Syslog] Forward compatibility
> 
> 
> Rainer wrote: