[rfc-i] Does the canonical RFC format need to be "readable" by developers and others?

[Martin Rex]

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> 
> >
> > I believe the risk that XSLT or Python interpreters disappear is low.
> > Dunno about TCL.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)#Development:
> 
> CPython's public releases come in three types, distinguished by which
> part of the version number is incremented:
> 
>	? backwards-incompatible versions, where code is expected to break
> and must be manually ported. The first part of the version number is
> incremented. These releases happen infrequently--for example,
> version 3.0 was released 8 years after 2.0.

Correct, it is the strict/full backwards compatibility that counts.
There is a disappointing low number of languages that tries hard to
*NOT* break existing code, even when adopting new features.

When the version numbering of the language is explicitly designed to
break backwards compatibility, then it is problably a language not
worth using for anything where longevity matters.


> 
> How much work is this? And what kind of dependencies are we talking about?
> 
> Remember, 40 years is a long time. But I'm pretty sure people will still
> be reading the IPv6 RFCs 40 years after their publication.

Definitely!
(in the interim 39 years, you may still get by on IPv4-only...).


-Martin