[Mailman-Developers] Re: subscription confirmations

Gerald Oskoboiny gerald@impressive.net
Thu, 19 Jul 2001 02:38:42 -0400


On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 10:02:54PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> On 7/18/01 2:24 PM, "Gerald Oskoboiny" <gerald@impressive.net> wrote:
> 
> > Because I know there are broken implementations out there, I
> > would not recommend that most people try prefetching any URLs
> > they see in their incoming email,
> 
> But doesn't the standard encourage just that, because it puts a patina of
> "it's okay to do this"

what is "this" exactly?

> on a standard that's clearly not safe to do so with,

I disagree re "clearly not safe"; like I said in my previous message,
"I don't think the problem is yet widespread enough that we need to
declare the HTTP spec irrelevant and just use GET and POST with no
regard for their intended semantics."

What should the spec say, you should not GET any URLs, any time,
because doing so might trigger unexpected side effects in noncompliant
implementations?

> while not really dealing (at least in any of the stuff I've seen) with why
> it's not really safe, at least in a way someone who isn't already familiar
> with the issues would catch?

Once again this sounds like a comment on spec quality, and I suggest
you take it up with the IETF HTTP working group or start a discussion
on the www-talk list.

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@impressive.net>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/