[Standards] Re: compliance levels for 2008

[Rachel Blackman]

>>> Implementation is different from deployment. Compliance levels  
>>> are for
>>> software implementations, not service deployments.
>> Hmm, but can't just about anything be componentized?  How would a  
>> MUC module
>> be distinct from, say, a StartTLS module in terms of compliancy?
> And from the other side: some features in clients could be implemented
> as plugins.

Arguably, the compliance levels should test against a given  
distribution.  It does not matter if the server implements TLS as a  
plugin or not, so long as it does so /in the distributed version/.   
It could be implemented by telepathic carrier pigeons running data  
back and forth to an Enigma machine, for all the other side cares;  
they just want to know that it speaks TLS.

It seems to me that there does not necessarily need to be feature  
parity between the client and server compliance levels, either; MU-C  
is nice, but is not necessarily a required feature on every single  
server situation.  But whether or not a given server has MU-C or not,  
it's useful for the CLIENT to support it (since you can, after all,  
use MU-C on other servers).  So for the client, sure, MU-C can be in  
a plugin rather than in the core, but that plugin then has to be part  
of both the tested installation and part of the distribution package  
if you want that package to be able to claim compliance.

For MU-C, that is not something which MUST be in a server; there are  
lots of different implementations for it, and it's not worth the time  
to test every implementation/server pairing.   But it /is/ important  
for general end-user clients to have it.

(Arguably, there's a good place for a 'XMPP Conference Server 2009'  
specification down the line, for MU-C server implementations to be  
tested against.)

And to stave off the argument I can already sense incoming on the  
'but you said servers may not need it'... CLIENTS, however, have an  
obligation to run in a wider variety of situations.  Sure, someone  
may have a corporate client used in one situation which does not need  
MU-C and XHTML-IM and so on.  But then arguably they don't /need/  
Intermediate compliance anyway and will find Basic sufficient. :)

-- 
Rachel Blackman <rcb at ceruleanstudios.com>
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