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63 lines
2.5 KiB
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63 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
Filename: 303-protover-removal-policy.txt
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Title: When and how to remove support for protocol versions
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Author: Nick Mathewson
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Created: 21 May 2019
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Status: Open
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1. Background
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With proposal 264, added support for "subprotocol versions" -- a
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means to declare which features are required for participation in the
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Tor network. We also created a mechanism (refined later in proposal
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297) for telling Tor clients and relays that they cannot participate
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effectively in the Tor network, and they need to shut down.
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In this document, we describe a policy according to which these
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decisions should be made in practice.
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2. Recommending features (for clients and relays)
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A subprotocol version SHOULD become recommended soon after all
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release series that did not provide it become unsupported (within a
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month or so).
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For example, the current oldest LTS release series is 0.2.9; when it
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becomes unsupported in 2020, the oldest supported release series will
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be 0.3.5. Suppose that 0.2.9 supports a subprotocol Cupcake=1, and
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that all stable 0.3.5.x versions support Cupcake=1-3. Around one
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month after the end of 0.2.9 support, Cupcake=3 should become a
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_recommended_ protocol for clients and relays.
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Additionally, a feature can become _recommended_ because of security
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reasons. If we believe that it is a terrible idea to run an old
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protocol, we can make it _recommended_ for relays or clients or both.
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We should not do this lightly, since it will be annoying.
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3. Requiring features (for relays)
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We regularly update the directory authorities to require relays to
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run certain versions of Tor or later. We generally do this after a
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short outreach campaign to get as many relays as possible to upgrade.
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We MAY make a feature required for relays one month after every
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version without it is obsolete and unsupported, though it is better
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to wait three months if possible.
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We SHOULD make a feature required for relays within 12 months after
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every version without it is obsolete and unsupported.
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4. Requiring features (for clients)
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Clients take the longest time to update, and are often the least able
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to fetch upgrades. Because of this, we should be very careful about
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making subprotocol versions required on clients, and should only do
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so for fairly compelling reasons.
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We SHOULD NOT make a feature required for clients until it has been
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_recommended_ for clients for at first 9 months.
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We SHOULD make a feature required for clients if it has been
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_recommended_ for clients for at least 18 months.
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