Re: Are cool URIs for life?

On 29 April 2017 at 05:02, David Wood <david@3roundstones.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I don’t check this email address very often any more, but this
> conversation caught my attention.
>
> Two quick points:
>
> 1) Persistence of URIs: This problem has been well known and acknowledged
> since at least 1995 when PURLs were first introduced. On the positive side,
> we still have URLs and DNS 22 years later.
>
> 2) On the negative side, do any of us really think that DNS is going to be
> around for too many more decades? I rather doubt it.
>
> We had some excellent discussions at WWW 2017 in Perth regarding various
> problems with distributed and centralised identifiers, and mappings between
> the two. It seems to me that we are getting conceptually close to defining
> global identifier mechanisms without the need for DNS. That would cause a
> bit of work to adjust to, wouldn’t it?
>

DNS thrives, and will continue to thrive, based, not on technical merit,
but rather, on the network that has built up around it.

Making a dent in http, to move to https, which was really a kludge, has
been a multi decade uphill struggle.

Making a dent in DNS is going to be a much harder struggle, because it is
so widely deployed and used.

There was a suggestion by TimBL, that we say http sameAs https for all
URIs, which makes a lot of sense.


>
> Regards,
> Dave
> --
> David Wood
> http://about.me/david_wood
>
> On 28 April 2017 at 18:51:39, Ivan Herman (ivan@w3.org) wrote:
>
> Just reacting on this somewhat philosophically… shouldn't the subject say
> "Are cool URIs for life and death?"
>
> The problem is that there is no guarantee that the HTTP URI-s will remain
> unchanged. The recent HTTP to HTTPS push is just one of the most visible
> signs of how fragile it is. But, for example, can you really be sure that
> you can maintain "csarven.ca", or I can maintain "www.ivan-herman.net"
> for life? What if the business model for domain names changes radically
> (say, my current registar goes belly up) in such a way that I cannot keep
> the domain name? What if the political environment forces a person to use a
> national domain rather than an international one like ".net"? Or only
> Canadian citizens are allowed to use a ".ca" domain (unless you are a
> Canadian citizen in which case this is not a problem)? And, of course, what
> happens when I pass away? How long would my domain name stay around, and
> how can I ensure that another person, called Ivan Herman, doesn't decide to
> reuse (unknowingly) the same domain in, say, 30 years when I may not be
> around?
>
> The problem I see is that we try to piggyback a very very strong feature
> and requirement like our personal identity on a feature/business
> environment that does not really care about all those consequences.
> Ideally, we should have a separate TLD whose very purpose is to provide
> identities to people, and would, somehow, ensure services that answer to
> all these questions. But, afaik, we do not have that. (There is a TLD
> called .name, but is very seldom used and I have no idea what special
> features it has, if any.)
>
> (In the meantime, because I moved my web site to https, I announce
> https://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf#me as my personal ID, and I add an
> owl:sameAs to http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf#me in the corresponding
> RDFa/Turtle file.)
>
> Ivan
>
>
> > On 27 Apr 2017, at 14:24, Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> wrote:
> >
> > Are "cool URIs don't change" for life?
> >
> > Would the policing of this fall under the jurisdiction of pedantic-web?
> >
> > Discuss.
> >
> > Aside: Please help me decide on this burning issue that I've been
> > putting off: https://twitter.com/csarven/status/857569335908454401
> >
> > -Sarven
> > http://csarven.ca/#i
> >
>
>
> ----
> Ivan Herman, W3C
> Publishing@W3C Technical Lead
> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> mobile: +31-641044153 <+31%206%2041044153>
> ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704
>
>
>
>
>