Subject: Re: [websec] Strict-Transport-Security syntax redux

From: =JeffH <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:42:16 -0700

>>   The max-age directive MUST appear once in the Strict-Transport-Security
 >>   header field value. The includeSubDomains directive MAY appear once.
 >>   The order of appearance of directives in the Strict-Transport-Security
 >>   header field value is not significant.
 >>
 >>   Additional directives extending the the semantic functionality of
 >>   the Strict-Transport-Security header field may be defined in other
 >
 > MAY or might ?

yes, a good question.

I believe that there's examples in other RFCs of the use of the lower-case 
"may" in situations similar to this (I've seen it discussed many times over the 
years). I.e., not all instances of "may" in any given RFC are capitalized 
"MAY"s. In this case, "MAY" isn't appropriate IIRC.

And yes, a way to avoid that question/issue is to use a different word such as 
"might" or "can", which i can do.  I just thought a "may" has more correct 
connotations (but I /knew/ it'd come up as a question :)

thanks,

=JeffH

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 08:58:55 +0200

On 2011-10-29 04:42, =JeffH wrote:
> I believe that there's examples in other RFCs of the use of the
> lower-case "may" in situations similar to this (I've seen it discussed
> many times over the years). I.e., not all instances of "may" in any
> given RFC are capitalized "MAY"s. In this case, "MAY" isn't appropriate
> IIRC.
>
> And yes, a way to avoid that question/issue is to use a different word
> such as "might" or "can", which i can do. I just thought a "may" has
> more correct connotations (but I /knew/ it'd come up as a question :)
>
> thanks,

+1 to "can"

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:27:50 -0400

Use of lowercase may is certainly allowed.

But it causes so much hassle as people (1) keep asking if it should be MAY
and (2) 'correct' the draft to use upper case.

It is easier to try using other words instead. Which is not easy since it
tends to crop up all the time in non-normative text.

Probably the best long term solution would be to have an XML2RFC tag that
declared a section as non-normative so that the nits checker can then catch
unintentional uppercasing.

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 2:58 AM, Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>wrote:

> ______________________________**_________________
> websec mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/**listinfo/websec<https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/websec>
>

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/