From 46094c114fd077494e58a91297d20816dfafa778 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Dave Thaler Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2025 12:12:14 -0700 Subject: [PATCH 1/3] Add section on discouraging ossification Under the section on incentives. Fixes #7. The second bullet in #7 was already addressed as part of adding the incentives section, and this PR addresses the first bullet of #7. Signed-off-by: Dave Thaler --- draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md | 15 +++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) diff --git a/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md b/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md index b2b36a9..baf97bc 100644 --- a/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md +++ b/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md @@ -316,6 +316,21 @@ This reduces the effectiveness of grease values in removing existing ossification, but can still have benefits for flagging issues in new implementations when they receive grease values. +## Discouraging Ossification + +Greasing alone can help ensure that middleboxes tolerate unrecognized extensions rather than +crashing, but one common middlebox behavior is to simply drop all unrecognized extensions. +Techniques such as disabling greasing when errors are encountered can enable communication +but may not provide enough incentive to discourage ossification. + +One approach to preserving the incentive to grease without being blamed for doing so, +while still potentially discouraging ossification is to make any such ossification visible. +For example, a sender can log and report ossification issues on a given path +when falling back to non-grease values. Or a receiver can log and report communication +that does not include grease values. Such reports might be used in social feedback +(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. + # Considerations for Increasing Protocol Variability {#variability} Greasing can maintain protocol extensibility by falsifying active use of its From 0adff47733f97baa0e1b96047a2220dc5be18e99 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Dave Thaler Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:00:55 -0700 Subject: [PATCH 2/3] Update draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md Co-authored-by: Tommy Pauly --- draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md b/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md index baf97bc..a590aad 100644 --- a/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md +++ b/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md @@ -324,7 +324,7 @@ Techniques such as disabling greasing when errors are encountered can enable com but may not provide enough incentive to discourage ossification. One approach to preserving the incentive to grease without being blamed for doing so, -while still potentially discouraging ossification is to make any such ossification visible. +while still potentially discouraging ossification, is to make any such ossification visible. For example, a sender can log and report ossification issues on a given path when falling back to non-grease values. Or a receiver can log and report communication that does not include grease values. Such reports might be used in social feedback From 44a2dfbe21ffc5d58de0a749394ce8f2e6752052 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Dave Thaler Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:01:04 -0700 Subject: [PATCH 3/3] Update draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md Co-authored-by: Tommy Pauly --- draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md b/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md index a590aad..f67f8ed 100644 --- a/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md +++ b/draft-edm-protocol-greasing.md @@ -326,7 +326,7 @@ but may not provide enough incentive to discourage ossification. One approach to preserving the incentive to grease without being blamed for doing so, while still potentially discouraging ossification, is to make any such ossification visible. For example, a sender can log and report ossification issues on a given path -when falling back to non-grease values. Or a receiver can log and report communication +when falling back to non-grease values. Similarly, a receiver can log and report communication that does not include grease values. Such reports might be used in social feedback (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.