- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 13:14:56 PDT
- To: "Josh Cohen (Exchange)" <joshco@exchange.microsoft.com>, Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu
- Cc: http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
The reasoning for the MUST requirement for the Host header was to leave absolutely no ambiguity for whether/when it was required, and to ensure that there sufficient servers that required it to force individuals to upgrade their clients if they had clients that didn't send it. Adding this requirement was imposed by the IESG; I don't think it was originally the consensus of the HTTP working group to do so. The arguments you've given against the requirement are primarily ones of 'general design principles'. If you were to develop or deploy a server that did not follow this guideline, you'd have a non-compliant server that was interoperable with all compliant clients, in addition to being interoperable with some non-compliant clients. That's good implementation advice in general, but there are occasionally reasons to violate general design principles. You might be able to convince the IESG to drop the requirement in the case where an absolute URI is supplied, but it's my guess that the answer will depend on how successful the original attempt to change user behavior through requirements on server compliance has been. Are there sufficient compliant HTTP servers around that users have upgraded their clients? My impression is 'no'. Larry
Received on Monday, 6 September 1999 13:20:10 UTC