Re: DOI and the non-IETF tree

Larry Lannom scripsit:

> makes perfect sense to me. In olden days I had the simple view that uri 
> schemes were reserved for identifiers that had defined over-the-wire 
> protocols, but that seems to have withered over time, or maybe it was 
> always a misunderstanding.

The mid: (message-ID) and cid: (content-ID) protocols for referring to mail
messages and parts thereof, respectively, have never had any wire protocols
tied to them, since the scheme-specific part is just a foobar@bazquux.example.net
string, not usable for retrieval.

> 1. The distinction between IETF and non-IETF source and or continued 
> control of a scheme seems reasonable, but what is the advantage of 
> building it into the label? That is, what do I know about, say, 
> org-doi:10.123/456 that I don't know from doi:10.123/456? 

Because the IETF may wish to define a scheme called doi in the future.
(They get the short names because they were there first.)  Qualifying the
scheme name makes sense for the same reason that qualifying host names does.
In the beginning, all Arpanet hosts had simple names maintained in a HOSTS.TXT
file, but that doesn't scale -- too many people wanted to give their hosts
simple names, and so the DNS hierarchy was born.

> 2. Change control -- the IDF, to be sure, would consider itself the 
> authority for making changes in the meaning and use of DOIs and I would 
> look to the IETF for information on the details of FTP. But in what 
> formal sense does the IETF own change control on FTP? 

In the sense that the ftp: URI scheme is defined by a document under IETF
change control, namely RFC 1738.

-- 
"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>

Received on Thursday, 11 September 2003 17:07:54 UTC