Skip to content
Merged
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
18 changes: 18 additions & 0 deletions draft-iab-protocol-greasing.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -340,6 +340,24 @@ that does not include grease values. Such reports might be used in social feedb
(e.g., public product or service reviews), or in contractual business relationship (e.g., SLA)
discussion, in order to provide an incentive to implementers or deployers of ossified implementations.

Similar techniques can be used to encourage greasing and variability by others, to
provide further discouragements against ossification in the future.
Having a receiver log and report communication that does not include grease values,
as noted above, can also be used to report on senders that do not support greasing.
It is useful, however, to be able to distinguish between the sender not supporting greasing,
versus the sender supporting greasing but only non-greased messages arriving at the
receiver. Protocols defining greasing mechanisms should consider whether receivers
can distinguish between these two cases.

It is not generally recommended to use more drastic incentives to require greasing
such as degrading performance or reliability for senders that don't support greasing.
While this is possible, the benefits of greasing are longer term, rather than immediate,
and the incentives are often not aligned. {{Section 2.1.1 of SUCCESS}} explains that success
most easily comes when those who are required to make a change are the ones who gain
the most benefit, and the benefit is noticeable. If the sending implementation does
not plan to use new extensions in the future, it would not see any benefit from being
pushed to add greasing.

# Considerations for Increasing Protocol Variability {#variability}

Greasing can maintain protocol extensibility by falsifying active use of its
Expand Down