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Comment by ibotty | Hacker News Reader

> That would have destroyed any hope of adoption by content providers and probably browsers.

why adoption by browsers?

I'm less sure browsers wouldn't adopt, but if content providers are slow to adopt due to massive changes in how they handle sessions / tracking / everything else they do with cookies, browsers are not incentivized to adopt.

I suspect it would end up looking similar to IPv6: Unless ISPs are providing the majority of users with IPv6, software developers aren't well incentivized to support IPv6 in their software. Similarly to browsers, they'd lose very little for supporting the new standard now, but the gains are low while adoption by the other group is low.

I don't see how this should stop us from fixing legitimate problems. As far as I know IPv6 adaptation is not a software problem at this point.

You are not fixing legitimate problems if the new spec never gets adopted by anyone.

The new spec wouldn't get adopted it if didn't offer anything better. See: IPv6

"won't". It hasn't been adopted by even a significant portion of the internet yet, and based on these discussions I'm fearful it will turn out exactly like IPv6.

That's not really my position to represent though. As an engineer you have to be firm if the issue is worthwhile. Just because the tech industry is a largely a vertical oligopoly doesn't mean we should support it. Technology would be a better place if the parties opposing security, robustness, privacy etc. would have to take an active stand against it rather than being able to hide behind vague design decisions. I do also think there are things that aren't worthwhile to be fighting for though.

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