(4:29 PM)
Postel's Law
generally quoted as "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."
it was stated in RFC 793 (a 1981 TCP specification):
2.10. Robustness Principle: TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.
it's a backwards-compatibility thing, and and has recently been a topic of debate in forming the Atom and RSS specs.
while looking for people talking about it, I read Mark Pilgrim's "There are no exceptions to Postel's Law (funny anecdote about test cases towards the end), and Just is a Dangerous Word.
