Re: Industry Standard's Net 21

Koen Holtman (Koen.Holtman@cern.ch)
Mon, 28 Jun 1999 15:04:48 +0200 (MET DST)


On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Robert S. Thau wrote:

> Koen Holtman writes:
> > On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, Robert S. Thau wrote:
> >
> > [...Netscape...]
> > > All I'm trying to say is that in *one particular case*, they don't
> > > deserve sole blame for the breakdown; they have no such defense for,
> > > say, jerking around HTTP (which had a working group which generally
> > > did a much better job).
> >
> > They jerked around HTTP? I don't recall any incidents; I'd rather say
> > they practiced benign neglect.
> >
> > I'd be interested in examples.
>
> Buggy range support and the poorly-thought-out cookie spec are the
> usual complaints...

Yes, there is that. I would not call that jerking around HTTP though,
neither of these things really broke or destabilised the core protocol, or
the standards process of the http-wg.

Of course, cookies are a disaster, but I generally view them as a HTTP
extension, not as part of HTTP itself.

Overall I would say that the implication that Netscape did indefensible
things with respect to HTTP is unjustified.

> rst

Koen.