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It is unspecified whether the 'remote end' MUST/SHOULD/MAY/MUST NOT/... accept commands from a remote 'local end'. Note: I believe currently IEDriver does not accept commands from remote clients. There is not even a command line switch to enable that. 'Remote end' is defined here: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webdriver/raw-file/default/webdriver-spec.html#naming-the-two-sides-of-the-api It says "The implementation of the remote end may be on a machine remote from the user of the local end." but that does not require anyone do anything and doesn't even explicitly inform that 'remote end *may* be on the *same* machine where the local end is' (which a formalist-ass like myself may want to see).
The F2F decided to make the text non-normative. We should not be using normative language in the appendix.
I've raised https://github.com/w3c/webdriver/pull/324 to address this.