Re: Must and should: new proposal (was: Re: Must and should again)
* Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> [010416 05:54]:
> > Does that possibility satisfy everyone:
> > - MUST and SHOULD change to the universally-recognised IETF meanings
>
> It's still not clear why this would be a Good Thing.
>
> The only real reason I've seen is that it's confusing people (and then,
> it's not apparently confusing maintainers per se, just policy people who
> think about it too much). That could be solved just as well by changing
> must to "HAVE TO" and should to "OUGHT TO" (and may to "MIGHT LIKE TO")
> or something. [2]
I like Julian's suggestion. It isn't so much to prevent confusion as it
is for convenience of not forcing a context switch when people read RFCs
versus when people read policy. People manage to work with multiple
definitions of words all the time -- but we could avoid forcing it, and
the ensuing discussion, by switching our meanings to match the IETF's.
If we can simultaneously (a) get the same meanings as the IETF and (b)
make clear the distinctions between RC and our desires of how packages
should act by adding a simple asterisk, I am honestly surprised you
aren't so keen on it, aj. :) I figured you would be the *first* person
to support Julian's suggestion; you wouldn't have to object every time
someone introduced MUST to a proposal. :)
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