411 REFERENCE · Wiktionary
Postel's law
Reference material by Wiktionary contributors. This retains its source identity and is not 411 news reporting.
English
robustness principle
Alternative forms
en Postel's Law
Etymology
en Internet pioneer Jon Postel = 1943 1998.
Proper noun
en software engineering The design principle that software should be conservative as to its own behaviour (i.e. strictly compliant with specifications) but liberal in the behaviour it tolerates from other systems.
en Jesse Liberty Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook 2005 O'Reilly Media 978-0-596-55294-7 47 https://books.google.com/books?id=Y7EitNiYvqMC&lpg=PA47&dq=%22contravariance%22&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q=%22contravariance%22&f=false Contravariance is consistent with Postel's Law: “Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”
Further reading
RFC 760
RFC 1122