RE: Redirection of a POST as a GET

At this point, I'm not sure it's productive to point fingers anywhere.  We're in a world where this a spec that mandates one behavior, and on the order of a billion client installations that behave in a way contrary to the spec.

The 303 and 307 status codes effectively clarify the exact behavioral specification without impacting legacy compatibility, so it's not clear to me that there's any benefit in further work here beyond documenting the inconsistency in implementation for 301/302 and recommending that user-agents and servers use 303 and 307 as appropriate.

-Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-http-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:ietf-http-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Roy T. Fielding
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 5:05 PM
To: Anne van Kesteren
Cc: ietf-http-wg@w3.org Group
Subject: Re: Redirection of a POST as a GET


On Mar 8, 2007, at 2:37 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> In terms of implementing it's quite disappointing that spec writers
> don't always see a clear message that the industry doesn't want it
> the way things are specified and instead requests a different
> approach.

The specification writers did more to implement HTTP than every single
browser vendor still in business.  It's not our fault that some folks
are too lazy to read a specification that clearly defined the redirect
method since 1995 (when Henrik convinced an entire WG that we should
define the codes as implemented in CERN/W3C libwww).  None of your
implementations predate the specification and everyone participating
in the process agreed to the status code definitions.  It's not our
fault that you have no spine and won't report errors to users.
It's not our fault that you prefer to act like lemmings instead of
standing up for your own businesses.

....Roy

Received on Friday, 9 March 2007 03:13:52 UTC