Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Supersedes problems with rapid-fire articles
Message-ID: <1989Sep7.192336.24604@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5200@looking.on.ca> <536@logicon.arpa> <3246@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> <1989Sep6.221624.28405@utzoo.uucp> <66812@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 89 19:23:36 GMT

In article <66812@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes:
>If the article is not present, then you can't cancel it. if you cant
>cancel it, then you dont forward the cancel message.
>
>Thats pretty unambiguous to me. Its also the intent of the passage.
>You are clearly violating the RFC. There is no quesiton about it.

Except that what is actually done is a third possibility:  one neither
cancels it nor fails to cancel it, one arranges for cancellation in
future... which may or may not ever happen.  The language in the RFC
simply does not cover that at all.  We are "clearly violating" the RFC
only if one assumes that the RFC *must* have the answer to *any* question,
i.e. the words must be bent and reinterpreted until an answer comes out.
Real documents don't have all the answers.  The real situation is that
the RFC just doesn't address deferred cancellations.

>If you want to ignore that passage, fine. However, don't pretend to
>comply with it.

Given a narrow interpretation of that passage, and at least one assumption
that is not in the RFC, we are ignoring it (for what we consider pretty 
good reason).  Given a broader interpretation without added assumptions,
we think it can fairly be said that we are complying with it.  The RFC
could use revision to clarify this (preferably with input from people
who've dealt with the robustness issues).   Until that is done, we think
the fairest statement is that we may violate one obvious interpretation
of the law, but we do not clearly and unambiguously violate the letter
of the law itself.

(As we've said before, the standard has to be the RFC as written, not what
the authors "really had in mind" or what their own software does.)
-- 
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
