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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Articles rejected by C news at ukma
Message-ID: <1991Jun26.155257.5692@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1991 15:52:57 GMT
References: <1991Jun16.144010.15240@ms.uky.edu> <22527@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991Jun19.041122.3745@mp.cs.niu.edu> <22591@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991Jun25.172300.24154@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Jun26.024210.9578@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Jun26.024210.9578@ccu.umanitoba.ca> mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills) writes:
>>They do.  We've done a lot of things for standards conformance that we
>>don't particularly like, actually.
>
>Whatever happened to: ``be liberal in what you accept ...''?  I don't want
>to stir the fire, but would it be sufficent if Cnews only _generated_
>conformant articles? ...

Unfortunately, no.  We did more or less that for quite a while.  It caused
grief for a lot of people, because nonconforming articles we passed along
wreaked havoc with other (arguably poorly written) software.

It is important to remember that the Internet robustness principle reads,
precisely (from section 1.2.2 of RFC1122):

	Be liberal in what you accept, and
	conservative in what you send.

Not "generate".  "Send".  When you relay an article, you are sending it.
The site next door sees little difference between articles you originate
and articles you pass on.  To properly implement the robustness principle,
when you relay traffic you *must* make sure it meets the specs, either
by repairing deviations or by rejecting nonconforming articles.

We chose rejection because of repeated bad experience with software that
attempts repairs.  Repair works fine when the deviations are the expected
ones.  Unexpected deviations, however, all too often get "repaired" into
legal but erroneous trash.  When dealing with the sort of volume we see
in news traffic, this can be disastrous for you, your neighbors, or even
the entire net.
-- 
"We're thinking about upgrading from    | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5."              |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry