RE: LAST CALL: draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-simplepaged-02.txt

[Peter Whittaker <pww@entrust.com>]

>From: 	Frank Dawson[SMTP:fdawson@earthlink.net]
>The industry believes that "thin clients" are the way to go. Pushing back on
>providing robust "services" in the server is myopic.

I'm very suspicious of claims that the industry is heading in any
particular direction.  For some purposes, thin clients may well be the
way to go.  For others, they most definitely are not.  Excluding or
rejecting particular enhancements or extensions on the grounds that many
if not most implementations are unable or unwilling to take advantage of
them seems counter to the spirit of innovation that characterizes the
best work of the IETF and its participants (and I daresay that say of
other standards bodies).

After all, the capabilities under discussion are extensions to an
existing (and theoretically "thin") protocol, a protocol designed with
such extensions in mind.  They are in no way mandatory, and in fact are
likely to be of interest to only a relatively small subset of the
Internet community.  Fortunately, the IETF's process is designed to
handle this, with RFCs characterized as required (thou shalt do this),
recommended (if do anything along these lines, thou shalt do it this
way) and informational (here's a way to do something, you're under no
obligation to pay any attention, caveat emptor, YMMV).

pww



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