This was actually a good example of something a spec wouldn't help (though would still be good to have). The inconsistent behavior here arose out of 0.8 not faithfully implementing some implicit behavior in BDB. The behavior in question is not anywhere in the Bitcoin code itself, nor is it visible at the interface of BDB and Bitcoin.  If there were a spec it would make no mention of it— and yet the network would be broken all the same.

The key thing is that in a distributed consensus system the most important definition of right is "consistent", this is paramount to all other concerns. A spec is helpful to the extent that it makes it easier to achieve a bit identical consistent behavior in the validation of blocks across all nodes, but because the spec itself can't be executed a spec can never guarantee consistency, at least not in the real world. (well, unless the spec is code— which is effectively what we have, for worse or better)


(And seriously, shad0wbitz etc. Act like an adult here. Your comments are very uncool.)