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Standards and Protocols

Standardization is the prerequisite for scaling complex systems across independent teams, vendors, and network boundaries without centralized coordination.

Operating System Standards

Operating systems standardize system call surfaces and userland environments so software remains portable across kernels and hardware architectures:

  • See POSIX vs SUS vs LSB for the evolution of Unix portability standards.
  • OCI (Open Container Initiative): Standardizes container runtime (runtime-spec) and image layer formats (image-spec).

The IETF and RFCs

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) establishes internet standards via Request for Comments (RFC) documents:

  • RFC 20: ASCII character set
  • RFC 793: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
  • RFC 2460: IPv6 Specification
  • RFC 6749: The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework
  • RFC 7540 / 7541: HTTP/2 and HPACK header compression

RFC 2119: Requirement Levels

To prevent architectural ambiguity, RFC 2119 standardizes normative terminology across specifications:

  • MUST / REQUIRED / SHALL: An absolute requirement of the specification.
  • MUST NOT / SHALL NOT: An absolute prohibition of the specification.
  • SHOULD / RECOMMENDED: Valid reasons may exist in particular circumstances to ignore this item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed.
  • SHOULD NOT / NOT RECOMMENDED: Valid reasons may exist when this behavior is acceptable, but the implications should be understood.
  • MAY / OPTIONAL: Truly optional; an implementation that does not include the option MUST be prepared to interoperate with one that does.

Semantic Versioning (SemVer)

SemVer provides a formal contract between library authors and consumers to communicate risk and compatibility:

MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH
  • MAJOR: Breaking changes; API surface incompatibility.
  • MINOR: Backward-compatible new functionality.
  • PATCH: Backward-compatible bug fixes and security patches.

Data & Model Standards

  • JSON Schema: Standardizes JSON structure validation for APIs and configs.
  • ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange): An open ecosystem for interoperable AI/ML models across PyTorch, TensorFlow, and runtimes.
  • Open Graph Protocol (OGP): Standardizes rich preview metadata (og:title, og:image) across web platforms.
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