Remove publisher priority.

[kixelated]

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[claude]

Claude finished @kixelated's task —— View job

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PR Review: Remove Publisher Priority ✅

I've completed a comprehensive review of the changes that remove publisher priority functionality from the MOQ lite specification.

Review Tasks:

• Analyze the specific changes made to draft-lcurley-moq-lite.md
• Check for consistency and completeness after the removal
• Look for any remaining references that might need cleanup
• Assess technical impact on the protocol specification
• Provide feedback on code quality, potential issues, and best practices

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Analysis

The PR removes a single sentence from line 414 in the SUBSCRIBE message documentation:

- If there is a tie, a publisher may choose which subscription takes priority, if any.

Review Feedback

✅ Positive Aspects:

1. Clean removal: The change is surgical and well-contained, removing only the tie-breaking behavior without affecting the core priority mechanism
2. Maintains consistency: The removal doesn't create any dangling references or inconsistencies within the MOQ lite specification
3. Preserves core functionality: Subscriber priority still works as intended - publishers should transmit higher priority values first during congestion

📋 Technical Impact Assessment:

Specification Clarity:

• Improvement: Removing the tie-breaking clause simplifies the priority model by eliminating publisher discretion in ambiguous cases
• Consistency: This aligns with the "lite" philosophy of the specification - removing optional complexity

Protocol Behavior:

• No breaking changes: The core priority mechanism (draft-lcurley-moq-lite.md:412-413) remains intact
• Reduced ambiguity: Publishers no longer have discretionary tie-breaking power, which could lead to non-deterministic behavior
• Simplified implementation: Removes a potentially complex edge case from publisher implementations

Cross-document Consistency Check:

• ⚠️ Potential inconsistency: draft-lcurley-moq-use-cases.md:321 still mentions "A relay should use the publisher's priority/order only when there's a conflict" - this may need updating to reflect the simplified model where publishers no longer have tie-breaking authority

Recommendations

1. Consider updating use-cases document: The use-cases document (draft-lcurley-moq-use-cases.md:321) still references publisher priority in conflict resolution. Consider updating this to reflect the simplified priority model.

2. Specification completeness: With tie-breaking removed, consider explicitly stating what should happen when subscriber priorities are equal (e.g., "implementation-defined behavior" or "round-robin").

Security & Performance Considerations

• Security: ✅ No security implications - this is a protocol behavior simplification
• Performance: ✅ Slight improvement - removes complexity from publisher priority decision-making
• Interoperability: ✅ Good - simplifies implementation requirements

Test Coverage

Since this is a protocol specification document rather than implementation code, traditional test coverage doesn't apply. However, the change should be reflected in:

• Implementation test suites that verify priority behavior
• Conformance tests for tie-breaking scenarios

Summary

This is a well-executed simplification that aligns with the MOQ lite philosophy of removing complexity. The change improves specification clarity while maintaining the core priority functionality. The only concern is potential inconsistency with the use-cases document that should be addressed.

Recommendation: Approve with suggestion to update cross-references in related documents.

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