Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] User-Agent Client Hints & UA Reduction (#640)

Thanks for your reply @miketaylr 

I believe that this topic still requires a lot of discussion. We stand by the points we have already made about the changes proposed being reckless and that they will cause harm to the operation of the Web and associated ecosystem of services, applications etc. Rather than repeat those points, which like I say bear further discussion, I will try to keep my response as brief as I can:

> A site won’t need to migrate to UA-CH if they only rely on browser name, major version, platform, or mobileness

In general that’s not the case. One of the strongest use cases is for device type, for example.

> but have not received reports of site breakage, either publicly or through partner channels. If [@jorabin-51d](https://github.com/jorabin-51d) does know of sites that will break, we welcome reports at https://crbug.com/new so we can work with the sites to get them fixed.

We don’t think that gross mis-operation in the form of 500 errors etc. is the primary concern. Of more concern is user experience and optimisation. Site owners are always keen to respond quickly on first request with the best experience possible. I’m not sure I see the point of millions of sites reporting that the initial and subsequent experience for their users has become poorer, since that is a feature of the design. 

> We hope to bring UA-CH to the W3C (and [have already stated as much](https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/640#issuecomment-853634160) in this thread) once another implementer has stated an interest in implementing it.

It is a very significant concern that there is no other implementer, since this means that the Chromium way of doing things will splinter the Web. There is a good chance that this fracture in the Web will continue indefinitely. Were another implementer to come on board it seems likely to me that the standard would move on from today’s specification with potential further disruption to website operators. We face a world of “the chromium way” and “the standard way”. We know the TAG takes a strong interest in proposals being broadly supported and of wide applicability, and we think that the evidence says this is a standard that is not reached by this proposal.

> Client Hints (which UA-CH builds upon) [is standardized in the IETF](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8942).

Noting that this RFC is “Experimental” and is therefore not standardised at IETF. For the convenience, here is what IETF says (RFC 2026) about Experimental:
 
Specifications that are not on the standards track are labeled with one of three "off-track" maturity levels: "Experimental", "Informational", or "Historic". **The documents bearing these labels are not Internet Standards in any sense.**

> I’ll also note that we’re having this discussion in the middle of a TAG design review. :)

Noted. However the plan to proceed appears to be independent of what this TAG review will conclude.

Once again hoping that the TAG will find the content of this dialogue informative as to its findings.

Many thanks

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