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The problem is that being conservative and precise isn't enough. You and I can both be conservative, but disagree on the specifics (given an ambiguous spec, fo
by regularfry 11y ago
The problem is that being conservative and precise isn't enough. You and I can both be conservative, but disagree on the specifics (given an ambiguous spec, for instance). A permissive receiver of both our data now has to support both sides of our disagreement forever.
- DanBC 11y agoNo they don't. They just have to not explode.
- regularfry 11y agoThey do if they have any competition. Browsers are the perfect example here: a browser which responds to broken HTML by not working, but not exploding either, is going to lose out to one which does work. That means market forces pin the disagreement in place.
- DanBC 11y agoIE did well for many years. That's why people used quirks mode and work arounds. What's the current market share for IE? 30% 40%? That seems pretty good for a browser which for years was a broken malware propagating mess.
- JdeBP 11y agoPut more succinctly: Gresham's Law trumps Postel's Principle.