Re: About that Host: header....

>While I agree with John I believe that we need to give something more than a
>few weeks notice of a major change. There are some people who are very keen
>to have a 1.1 spec out in time for the May 1st parade (oops wrong country).

Phill,

I'm one of the people who is very keen to have a 1.1 spec out before May.
I'm even more keen, from my MCI perspective, to start telling vendors about
things we insist that they do in order for us to buy their products... a
list that prominently features "things that make service-bureau-like Web
sites manageable and keep the net from melting down".   I have an extremely
strong preference for stating those requirements in terms of reference to
the words in a standards-track document.  Why?  
   (i)  Because it is The Right Thing To Do and 
   (ii) I really believe that a WG rough consensus position is more likely
       to be correct --by virtue of reflecting analysis from 
       more different perspectives-- than anything I (or my 
       organization come up with by myself (ourselves)

>From my MCI-ish point of view (people associated with vendors read that as
"this is a customer speaking"), I've got no particular incentive to invest
in deploying 1.1 products in the absence of a solution to the "domain name
not delivered to server" problem.  That doesn't mean we wouldn't deploy such
a thing, but we are not actively on the market for one.  Conversely, I do
have a lot of incentive to invest in and deploy a 1.1 (or 2.0) that does
contain a fix for this problem.

>From my internet experience point of view, the current "use 'host' if the
domain name isn't otherwise supplied" language isn't a fix -- it is an
attempted patch that won't work well enough.  I actually feel a little
better about "host required always", but I don't think it is good enough and
that the rate of growth issues argue extremely strongly for "fix it now, and
fix it right".

And, while the schedule is tight, nothing has convinced me that we can make
better decisions in an area like this if we spend the next six months
thinking about it than if we, well, decide.  The marketplace won't wait
while we engage in extended self-contemplation.

   john

Received on Wednesday, 20 March 1996 18:05:06 UTC