Re: WebIDL Spec Status

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Jun 2014, Glenn Adams wrote:
> > >
> > > For pointless certification purposes, you can use any random revision
> > > of the spec -- just say what the revision number is and use that (and
> > > honestly, who cares how well you implement that version -- it's not
> > > like the testing process is going to be thorough). Don't ship that,
> > > though. Whatever you ship should be regularly kept up to date with
> > > changes to the spec as they occur. (It's not an option to not be able
> > > to ship fixes, since otherwise you'd be unable to fix security
> > > vulnerabilities either, which is obviously a non-starter.) What you
> > > ship, and subsequent revisions thereto, is what you should be spending
> > > any serious amount of time testing. And for that, you shouldn't use a
> > > snapshot, you should use the latest revision of the spec.
> > >
> > > For the pointless certification, just as for the patent coverage, we
> > > should publish whatever revision we have and just stamp it as a REC.
> > > It doesn't matter what bugs it has. We know it'll have bugs -- the day
> > > after it's published, maybe even earlier, we'll find new bugs that
> > > will need fixing. It doesn't really matter, since it's not for use by
> > > implementors, just by lawyers and pointless certification teams.
> >
> > I would respond, but it would be ... pointless.
>
> I'm guessing you misinterpreted what I said, specifically, that you
> interpreted the "pointless" in "pointless certification" as an insult of
> some sort. To clarify, I did not mean it that way; I meant it literally,
> as in, specifically the kinds of certifications that you may be required
> to pursue for political or bureaucratic reasons but which have no
> practical purpose, as opposed to the kind of certification that serves an
> important purpose, like certifying that some software that's going to run
> a rocket passes all its tests.
>

No, I did not take it as an insult. I have too thick a skin to be insulted.
In any case, most insults thrown my way are probably true. :)

My use of "pointless" was intended to mean that it is pointless to argue
with you about whether certification required by "political or bureaucratic
reasons" (by which I understand you to include legal reasons as well) is or
is not "pointless" to use your phrase. Clearly I don't agree with your
position.


>
> Certifying that software passes tests for an obsolete version of a
> standard, when the standard's purpose is interoperability and achieving
> that interoperability requires converging on a target that we're only
> slowly reaching over many years, is at best pointless, and at worst
> harmful, which is why I stand by the advice above.
>

We have different understandings of the meaning of "interoperability". My
interpretation of your definition of interoperability is that it is a
ghost: in the sense that it has no fixed point of reference, i.e., no fixed
set of specifications against which it (interoperability) can be certified.

Clearly we operate in different business regimes.


>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>