RE: nature of standards (was RE: RESEND: Thoughts on identity att acks)

[Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net>]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Michael Choung Shieh wrote:
> It would be hard to remove all optional modules since the protocols are
> developed to be used under different business cases...

Oddly enough, TCP/IP is used under all those "different business cases",
seldom needing optional modules.  It's stupid to design a "core protocol"
which is so stripped down that almost nobody can use it by itself.  One
does have to draw the line somewhere, but we should try to include most
users inside the line. 

> Even "C" is the same.  All latest C compilers support "//" as comment but
> it's not defined in the original C.

It's in the revised C standard, which came out a year or two ago. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@spsystems.net