Re: New Status Code -- 2xx Greedy Hotel?

fre 2007-03-16 klockan 09:49 +1300 skrev Adrien de Croy:

> Could use 303 for that?  e.g, clarify the intent of 303 to mean a 
> diversion rather than a detour (i.e. different destination rather than 
> different path to same destination).

Hmm.. will probably work most of the time with existing software but
does not match well with the definition of 303..

I think defining 402 is the right thing for the cases discussed
(payment, or accepting terms of use etc). I would also propose adding a
Location header in it's response as reference where the payment agent
(or similar) can be found, plus the requirement that the response body
as such is well useful for finding the payment agent.

It's not really a redirect. It's "sorry, you can't access this until you
have done XXX", so a 4xx is very appropriate.

A user agent (automata or interacting with a real user) handling a 402
as if it was a permanent 404 is well, broken, and needs to be fixed.
Education of software authors can help there.

How quick the industry will be in adopting this scheme is another
question, but in terms of specifications it would fill a noticeable gap.

But I also maintain that the whole idea of solving the network access
"payment" problem by temporary firewalling and redirection of port 80 is
by default a flawed design. Should be possible to come up with something
much smarter than that at the link level. But thats far outside our
intended charter.

Regards
Henrik