Alternative with neutral language for Issue 4544 (was RE: policy vocabulary, will not be applied, oh my!)

Chris Ferris proposed [2] a change that reads:

[Definition: A policy alternative is a potentially empty collection of
policy assertions
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-ws-policy-20070330/#policy_assertion> .]
An alternative with zero assertions indicates no behaviors. An
alternative with one or more assertions indicates behaviors implied by
those, and only those assertions. No other behaviors are to be applied
for the alternative. 


The rest of the edits in the original proposal [1] remain unchanged. 
[1]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-policy/2007May/0003.html 



I would propose the following modification that might capture the
position of those concerned with leaving detailed semantics of domain
policy assertions under the control of domain policy language designers.
There may be others who would advocate this position for other reasons.

 

[Definition: A policy alternative is a potentially empty collection of
policy assertions
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-ws-policy-20070330/#policy_assertion> .]
An alternative with zero assertions indicates no behaviors. An
alternative with one or more assertions indicates behaviors implied by
those, and only those assertions.

 

The inclusion of the phrase "implied by" addresses an objection I made
in [3], so it sounds reasonable to me!

 

I would also endorse moving the interoperability guidance motivating the
inclusion of the statement "No other behaviors are to be applied for the
alternative." and placing it into the guidelines document. Exactly how
that guidance is to be captured is, unfortunately, not something I have
seen formulated yet. I think it is something like "Stick to the policy
alternative implementation selected by the policy consumer (and present
in the policy provider policy!) and do not introduce other, potentially
conflicting or unsupported, functionality that might mess things up." 

 

[2]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-policy/2007May/0055.html

[3]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-policy/2007Apr/0108.html