Re: WebIDL Spec Status

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Jun 2014, Glenn Adams wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> > >
> > > Compraing implementations to anything but the very latest draft is not
> > > only a waste of time, it's actively harmful to interoperability. At no
> > > point should any implementor even remotely consider making a change
> > > from implementing what is currently specified to what was previously
> > > specified, that would literally be going backwards.
> >
> > That sounds reasonable, but its not always true (an exception to every
> > rule, eh). For example, in order to ship a device that must satisfy
> > compliance testing to be certified, e.g., to be granted a branding
> > label, to satisfy a government mandate, etc., it may be necessary to
> > implement and ship support for an earlier version.
>
> For pointless certification purposes, you can use any random revision of
> the spec -- just say what the revision number is and use that (and
> honestly, who cares how well you implement that version -- it's not like
> the testing process is going to be thorough). Don't ship that, though.
> Whatever you ship should be regularly kept up to date with changes to the
> spec as they occur. (It's not an option to not be able to ship fixes,
> since otherwise you'd be unable to fix security vulnerabilities either,
> which is obviously a non-starter.) What you ship, and subsequent revisions
> thereto, is what you should be spending any serious amount of time
> testing. And for that, you shouldn't use a snapshot, you should use the
> latest revision of the spec.
>
> For the pointless certification, just as for the patent coverage, we
> should publish whatever revision we have and just stamp it as a REC. It
> doesn't matter what bugs it has. We know it'll have bugs -- the day after
> it's published, maybe even earlier, we'll find new bugs that will need
> fixing. It doesn't really matter, since it's not for use by implementors,
> just by lawyers and pointless certification teams.
>

I would respond, but it would be ... pointless.


>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>