The MDMA server that was just installed at http://sunsite.unc.edu/ is broken.
If this were an experimental site, I wouldn't care. However, SunSITE is
a major site, and the fact that it is broken may have major ramifications
to those who link to it.
Why it is broken:
1) Does not support the HEAD request
This is the easiest method for a server to support. It is very
important for link verification tools and for many caching servers.
It is simply inexcusable not to support it on a major server.
2) Fails to include a Date: header on responses. This header is necessary
for cache management.
3) The ctime format is used for the Last-modified: date. That format
hasn't been used by valid servers in over a year!
4) Does not support the If-Modified-Since header (conditional GET protocol)
that allows for efficient cache updates.
5) Uses pathetic error messages. For example:
---------------------------------
HEAD http://sunsite.unc.edu/ HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: HEAD/0.4 libwww-perl/0.40
From: fielding@rome.ics.uci.edu
HTTP/1.0 501 Something broke
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
<H1>Error 501</H1>
---------------------------------
This is not the kind of thing that I would ever want to encounter
at a production site, certainly not at one as well-funded as SunSITE.
As WWW developers, we should all realize that changes to often-used
servers need to be made with great care. Failing to do so makes us
all look like a bunch of flakes.
Simon, I know you are capable of fixing the above. Either fix them now
or reinstall the NCSA server.
...Roy Fielding ICS Grad Student, University of California, Irvine USA
(fielding@ics.uci.edu)
<A HREF="http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding">About Roy</A>