Re: ISSUE PROXY-AUTHORIZATION: Proposal wording

At 08:26 PM 9/07/97 +0200, Koen Holtman wrote:
[...]
>I have no problems with people putting creative protocol extensions
>which violate a MUST in HTTP/1.1 in their proxies.  I would only have
>problems if people would go around distributing, or making available,
>these proxies as being fully HTTP/1.1 conformant, without telling
>anybody about the extra `special stuff'.
>
>We need to draw a firm line between `plain' and `extented', else there
>will be all kinds of trouble when cascaded proxy networks which span
>multiple organisations are going to be built.

  Such networks already exist, of course. Try asking the same question in
another way. If I sign an agreement with another cache operator in which we
state that our proxy caches are HTTP/1.1 compliant, does that contract
allow either of us to alter our proxy caches in such a way that one or more
of the MUSTs are violated?
  And if it does, what was the point of having a protocol specified at all?

- Donald Neal