Re: httpRange-14 Change Proposal

(commenting now as a technical contributor to the TAG)

On 3/25/2012 5:47 AM, Jeni Tennison wrote:
> a 200 response to a probe URI no longer by itself implies that the probe
> URI identifies an information resource or that the response is a
> representation of the resource identified by the probe URI; instead,
> this can only be inferred if the probe URI is the object of a
> ‘describedby’ relationship or the target of a 303 redirection.

I'm not taking a position pro or con on the overall proposal, but the part 
about "target of a 303" seems wrong to me. The rest of the proposal, good 
or bad, follows the tradition that those who host resources are responsible 
for the information conveyed in the HTTP responses generated.

In the case where your site does a 303 redirect to my URI, you seem to be 
committing that >my< resources is an information resource. How can I know 
who's out there doing 303's to my resources, and how can you take 
responsibility for characterizing my resource that way?

Indeed, even if I'm doing the redirects to my own resource, is there 
anything in today's specifications to mandate that the target of a 303 is 
an information resource? I assume it's the most common case, but my reading 
of 303 is that it's intentionally pretty vague. I read it as: "you might 
find something useful over here -- feel free to do a GET and see what 
happens". In fact, I'm not sure it's even clear that 303 targets need to be 
http resources at all. Is it provably wrong, e.g., to do a 303 redirect to 
a mailto URI?

Noah

Received on Sunday, 25 March 2012 18:39:40 UTC