LDP would benefit from being RESTful

Since I can no longer post to public-ldp where the work of the WG
occurs, and be part of that conversation, I'll try to summarize my
concerns with the LDP draft as it currently stands. I'll be
unsubscribing from public-ldp-wg shortly.

The charter of the WG mentions the word "REST" at least a dozen times,
yet the specification is rife with normative text that is explicitly
not RESTful. I've previously pointed out one specific case[1], but
there are others, though I think it would also be counter-productive
to itemize those at this time. That is because they all seem to stem
from a belief - hardwired in the editorial style of the specification
- that you're specifying a protocol at the layer of HTTP. IMO, you
shouldn't, and instead should be focusing on standardizing terms and
describing best practices; vocabularies, not conformance criteria.

FWIW, I've been aware of the problems with containment, forms, and
general mutation on the Semantic Web for some time[2], so applaud your
mandate to fix that problem.

 [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ldp-wg/2012Oct/0230.html
 [2] http://www.markbaker.ca/2003/05/RDF-Forms/

Mark.

Received on Wednesday, 14 November 2012 17:05:52 UTC