Re: Registration of acct: as a URI scheme has been requested

Michiel de Jong wrote:
> Hi Nathan,
> 
> On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:
>> Each service I can think of, has a stable (non-URI) identifier for user
>> accounts, from google through twitter, IMO those should be used, not these
>> fragile email addresses with a new scheme bolted on the front to try and
>> make it identify something it doesn't.
> 
> It's a premise of webfinger that we resolve a human-memorable string
> of the form 'user@host' to accounts.

I understand that, but don't see any need for a acct: URI scheme to 
accomplish that.

This is a URI that will accomplish the task:

  https://gmail.com/.well-known/host-meta?resource=joe@gmail.com

So where's the need for acct: ?

This is not two URIs, it's one URI, and no better than the above in any way:

   https://gmail.com/.well-known/host-meta?resource=acct:joe@gmail.com

Thus, I conclude that the only reason to have acct: and to strap it to 
joe@gmail.com is to use it as an identifier for an account, when that 
account already has a perfectly good, stable over time, but not exposed 
and non dereferencable identifier of it's own. Hence my previous mail.

Best,

Nathan