On Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> Undated references (what you are suggesting) has the MAJOR PROBLEM that it > makes it DIFFICULT/IMPOSSIBLE to do validation of any product that claims > conformance to a standard – since it's impossible to determine which version > of each undated reference they used. That's a FEATURE, not a "problem". Makes it inexcusable not to keep up with specs (same design built into HTML5, SVG, etc.). See also how this de-cupling worked for XML: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/2011OctDec/0192.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/2011OctDec/0201.html > Additionally, it makes interoperability difficult/impossible since you can > have multiple valid conforming implementations BUT they don't actually > interoperate due to changes between revisions (and algo changes would be a > good example of such an interoperability issue). I don't see how that is possible: if your spec does not conform to /latest/, then you are non-conforming. If you were conforming yesterday, but a new version of the a spec comes out tomorrow, then you update your software to conform to the latest version. As an example, almost all Browsers are on a 6 week release cycle now: so it's quite inexcusable to expect to just conform to some dates draft and then expected to never have to update the software (i.e., conformance is an ongoing "living process": specs are buggy, tests are buggy, and software is buggy… any of those can affect an conformance over time: the are all living things). Pretending that slapping a date on spec means anything is unhelpful (and actually harmful, because all specs contain bugs and hence must be continuously maintained). -- Marcos Caceres
