[whatwg] Video with MIME type application/octet-stream

[Adam Barth]

On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky at mit.edu> wrote:
>>> Of course nothing prevents us from saying UAs MUST NOT sniff but if they
>>> do
>>> anyway they MUST use a given algorithm, right?
>>
>> That's a contrary to duty imperative, which is something that's been
>> puzzling philosophers for centuries.  A more sensible requirement
>> would be that user agents SHOULD NOT sniff (for reasons XYZ), but, if
>> they do, they MUST use a the following algorithm.
>
> Except that in practice SHOULD NOT is treated as carte blanche to do the
> undesirable thing.  It has no teeth.  MUST NOT doesn't much either, but it's
> _something_ at least (in the sense that one can clearly claim that violating
> a MUST NOT is a bug).

In any case, lawyering the requirement level in the spec isn't the way
to solve these problems.  You need to change the underlying incentives
to actually affect what gets implemented.

Adam