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I'm the author of an April Fool's Internet Standard, AMA (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by Two9A@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Let's get the AMAs kicked off on Lemmy, shall we.

Almost ten years ago now, I wrote RFC 7168, "Hypertext Coffeepot Control Protocol for Tea Efflux Appliances" which extends HTCPCP to handle tea brewing. Both Coffeepot Control Protocol and the tea-brewing extension are joke Internet Standards, and were released on Apr 1st (1998 and 2014). You may be familiar with HTTP error 418, "I'm a teapot"; this comes from the 1998 standard.

I'm giving a talk on the history of HTTP and HTCPCP at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin later this month, and I need an FAQ section; AMA about the Internet and HTTP. Let's try this out!

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[–] M_Reimer@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (9 children)

The number one question I would ask about HTTP would be: Why was the "Referer" header initially added and why wasn't it removed from standard to this day. In my opinion the server, I'm going to, should never know where I came from.

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I've just done some quick browsing to see if there's a written-down motivation for Referer existing, and there's this on the Wikipedia: "Many blogs publish referrer information in order to link back to people who are linking to them, and hence broaden the conversation."

Which I guess makes sense, in the context of the original use of HTTP as an academic publishing protocol, but it's gained cruft and nefariousness since wider adoption came about.

There are good arguments for stripping Referer from the standard, and yours is one of the most cogent; if Referer is still a thing in another 30 years, I'd be surprised.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Follow-up question. Shouldn’t it be spelled “referrer”?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It should, certainly. But the original draft introducing the header had a typo, and now we're all stuck with it.

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