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Re: Vendor Info

At 11:51 AM 2/15/00 -0700, Mark Meredith wrote:
>I had intended these to only be set by the developer of the server on compile time. I feel that if you are able to change the values then there is really not any better than not having the values, I would like to have some confidence that the information if provided is accurate according to what the developer put there is valid.

You have already dismissed the accuracy of the provided information:
   Client and application implementers must consider that
   the existence of a given value in the vendorName or vendorVersion
   attribute is no guarantee that the server was actually built by the
   asserted vendor or that its version is the asserted version and
   should act accordingly.

You'll note that most web servers have the HTTP product tags
defaults generated as part of their build system, but allow
the local administrator to override these values.  This gives
the flexibility to the local administrator which is where it
should be.

>As for changing the wording . "If a client implementation does not recognize the specific vendorName or vendorVersion as one it recognizes, ..."
>What word would you recomend to clarify recognize? Or how would you re-word it to take recognize out or make it more solid (clear).

Something like:

If the vendor string does not exactly match vendor information
known to flawed, the client MUST NOT alter its behavior.  The
client SHOULD NOT use "fuzzy" or "wildcard" matching of vendor
information to determine its behavior.