Re: Change Proposal for HttpRange-14

Fair questions, Michael.
I have a lot of sympathy for your "I don't see the point of this whole discussion".
We can write what we want in documents, but the world can ignore them - and will if they don't work.
And the world will be what it is, not what we want it to be.

However.
Unfortunately, perhaps, standards are important for people who work in the field providing systems to others.
Personally, I never did agree with the solution, but have always aimed to carry out the implications of it in the systems I construct.

This is for two reasons:
a) as a member of a small community, it is destructive to do otherwise;
b) as a professional engineer, my ethical obligations require me to do so.

It is this second, the ethical obligations that are the most significant.
I should not digress from the standards, or even Best Practice, in my work.
(Apart from anything else, the legal implications of doing otherwise are very unpleasant.)

This means that systems involving Linked Data do not get built because the options I am allowed to offer are too expensive (in money, complexity, time or business disruption), or technologically infeasible due to local constraints.
So the answer to your first question is yes: semantic web (parts of) projects are stopped because of this. Ethics and community membership requires it.
When they do go ahead, of course they actually cause me some pain - implementing a situation I think is significantly sub-optimal - but I do not have the choice.

Of course, people who are outside this community will do what they feel like, as always.
But the current situation constrains the people in the community, who are the very people who should be helping others to build systems that are a little less broken.

Best
Hugh

On 25 Mar 2012, at 11:03, Michael Brunnbauer wrote:

> 
> Hello Jeni,
> 
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:13:09AM +0100, Jeni Tennison wrote:
>> I agree we shouldn't blame publishers who conflate IRs and NIRs. That is not what happens at the moment. Therefore we need to change something.
> 
> Do you think semantic web projects have been stopped because some purist
> involved did not see a way to bring httprange14 into agreement with the
> other intricacies of the project ? Those purists will still see the new
> options that the proposal offers as what they are: Suboptimal.
> 
> Or do you think some purists have been actually blaming publishers ? What will
> stop them in the future to complain like this: Hey, your website consists
> solely of NIRs, I cannot talk about it! Please use 303.
> 
> You are solving the problem by pretending that the IRs are not there then
> the publisher does not make the distinction between IR and NIR.
> 
> Maybe we can optimize the wording of standards and best practise guides to 
> something like "these are the optimal solutions. Many people also do it this 
> way but this has the following drawbacks..."
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Michael Brunnbauer
> 
> -- 
> ++  Michael Brunnbauer
> ++  netEstate GmbH
> ++  Geisenhausener Straße 11a
> ++  81379 München
> ++  Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
> ++  Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89 
> ++  E-Mail brunni@netestate.de
> ++  http://www.netestate.de/
> ++
> ++  Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
> ++  USt-IdNr. DE221033342
> ++  Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
> ++  Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel
> 

-- 
Hugh Glaser,  
             Web and Internet Science
             Electronics and Computer Science,
             University of Southampton,
             Southampton SO17 1BJ
Work: +44 23 8059 3670, Fax: +44 23 8059 3045
Mobile: +44 75 9533 4155 , Home: +44 23 8061 5652
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~hg/

Received on Sunday, 25 March 2012 11:20:03 UTC