> Ecosystems that adhere to Postel’s Law therefore experience a one way ratchet: consumers must accept more and more deviations from the specifications, and bec

> Ecosystems that adhere to Postel’s Law therefore experience a one way ratchet: consumers must accept more and more deviations from the specifications, and because consumers accept the deviations, producers are never forced (or incentivized) to themselves become stricter in following the specifications He's not wrong but this isn't exactly true - it is sometimes the case that protocols will incentive conformity even while accepting liberally. As a basic example, not failing on an unknown tag - say we have a system with emoji and if we sees an emoji tag we don't recognise we print it in text. This is liberal in what it accepts because if someone typos an emoji it is still accepted, but they are nonetheless incentivised to get the spelling right because they were trying to get an emoji to display. The same principle means that most comemnts on HN are spelled correctly or close too. So the truly inspired protocol will attach subtle costs to non-conforming emitters, but nonetheless tolerate them and allow them to participate in a network.