draft-mmeredith-rootdse-vendor-info-01.txt

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 10:46 AM 2/9/00 -0700, Mark Meredith wrote: 
>The use of vendorName and vendorVersion SHOULD NOT be used to
>discover features. It is just an informational attribute. 
 
Mark,

I believe you should clarify the intented use of these attributes.
I recommend you state your intent in your abstract, or add
a "Background and Intended Use" section.  Then rework rest
of document to be consistent with this intent.

In particular, you state that may be used discover X- features
in the overview.  And in the security section:
   The vendorName and vendorVersion attributes are provided only as an
   aid to help client implementers assess what features may or may not
   exist in a given server implementation.

This in inconsistent with Section 6.  If this section is
consistent with your intent, I suggest the following wording
be added someone early on in the document:
	Attributes defined by this specification are intended
	for informational purposes only and SHOULD NOT be
	used for feature discovery.

You also note that you intend that these attributes be used
to allow clients to workaround implementation bugs based
upon vendor specific information.  Though I believe it quite
appropriate to encourage clients to be "liberal in what they
accept", I believe we must be very careful not to encourage
one peer to violate the specification because they assume
the other has.  We must be very careful in the wording which
allows any non-informational use of these attributes.

Kurt