Sorry for shooting this approach down, but I'm against it. User-agent
strings are an extremely bad idea as it would lead developers to start
making communication choices depending on the client type. User-Agents in
HTTP are only useful if the clients (browsers) do not adhere to a well
defined behavior. I see the version string more as a kind of vanity point
(xyz peers are using my network code) and it would be bad to base choices
on it.
For protocol choices we already have a good mechanism in place (nServices)
to negotiate capabilities.

I for one vote for keeping it as simple as possible, just a simple string,
without any further meaning.

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Amir Taaki <zgenjix@yahoo.com> wrote:

> From talking with Patrick Strateman (phantomcircuit), he suggested this
> idea (which I will elaborate more on in the BIP):
>
> User-agent strings are a good starting point, however they aren't easy for
> parsing so we'll make a small modification to them.
>
> We need a hierarchy from protocol, variant, gui, flavour, build
>
> /Satoshi:314700/bitcoin-qt:0.4/
>
> How does that sound? In BitcoinJ's case:
>
> /BitcoinJ:0.2/AndroidBuild:0.8/
>
> Thoughts:
>
> - Do we need a freely defined comments field?
>
> /BitcoinJ:0.2[iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_1]/AndroidBuild:0.8/
> /Satoshi:314700/bitcoin-qt:0.4[Ubuntu Oneiric]/
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Christian Decker <decker.christian@gmail.com>
> *To:* Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>
> *Cc:* Amir Taaki <zgenjix@yahoo.com>; "
> bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net" <
> bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 5, 2011 2:45 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Lock protocol version numbers
>
> On BitDroid I stopped updating the protocol version at 31700 and set the
> string to be both Version and Client, just like BitcoinJ :-)
>
> On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:
>
> BitCoinJ already sets the subver field to its name and version.
>
>
>
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