Re: HTTP response version, again

Koen Holtman wrote:

>> such actions should not be tolerated.
>
>Your conclusion, not mine.  I interpret their action as a mistake, not
>as an act of war.  You forget that about half the people on this list
>(mis?)interpret the version number requirements of HTTP/1.x in the
>same way as AOL does.

but did any of them set out to deliberately sabotage the work of others
by silently blocking access ?. AOL's mistake was not approaching Apache
or anyone else to discuss their so called "problem". Instead they chose
to take on Apache and force it to play by AOL rules. They've admitted
that much.

>>It is not unreasonable for AOL to go out of their way to undo the change
>>now that they have been told that they have nothing to fear from http/1.1
>
>Sure, but give them some time.  Do not expect a big organization to be
>able to correct its mistakes quickly.

People running Apache 1.2 servers didn't have the luxury of giving AOL
time to make good especially when they showed no signs of doing so, quite
the opposite in fact.

>I don't think you should go to war with AOL.

The "war" is over before it started. AOL have now surrendered. An AOL
network director has told me that AOL will undo their HTTP/1.1 blockade.

>I recommend that you treat AOL's proxies as inferior 1.0 implementations

what new ?  :-)

>PS: I just read Apache Week 46, and it reports that you _are_ going to
>work around AOL's breakage.  So did I misunderstand your comments or
>is Apache Week wrong?

I haven't looked to see what they wrote but it sounds wrong. We had no
intention of changing Apache to workaround AOL's blockade. We did come
up with some optional and unreleased patches which were being considered
for distribution outside of the main source code.

rob

Received on Monday, 23 December 1996 11:08:06 UTC