Perhaps blame is the wrong word, but the original intent was to clarify a behavior that was clearly in violation of the requirements, drawing higher power than was allowed. I will retrace the steps that got the discussion here, as I see it:
- Power sinks were observed in the wild consuming power in outside the prescribed power draw specifications,
- An attempt is made to legislate a new behavior to make rogue devices clearly in violation.
I am putting forward my two cents worth:
- Nothing is idiot proof, idiots are just too good at their jobs,
- The present wording would make a lot of existing (and probably planned) PDs non-compliant.
I could be wrong about my understanding of the situation that got things here. But the specs are pretty clear that there is a (figurative) box that PDs are required to fit within and if the device in question sticks out of the box in any dimension then it is not a PD. My understanding from the original post was that the devices in question were outside the box. It is also my understanding that an attempt was being made to make the existing devices fail compliance in another way. But unless I am wrong, one failure to comply results in a non-compliant device; there is no such thing as less than 100% being a passing grade in regards to compliance.
I will also point out that the ability of a PD to refuse to draw current from the link without unplugging the PD was considered by some to be a key differentiating feature of PoE verses other technologies and you should think twice about deleting this feature.