is:
“If there’s an unexpected way to implement a widely used protocol or process, someone out there has done so.”
Yes, it’s a lot like the original Murphy’s Law, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he will”, attributed to Edward Murphy, an engineer on the rocket sled tests carried out in the 1950s, in discovering that all of the accelerometers on the a test subject had been wired backwards, requiring a re-run of an expensive test.
don’s law isn’t just a re-statement of Murphy’s Law, or even Sod’s Law (“if it can go wrong, it will”). It’s a recognition that there are a lot of implementations of stuff out there, some by people who don’t think the way you do. (Or I do. Or, in some cases, like any sane individual.) And the way those implementations work, especially under exception conditions, can vary enormously.