Webarch conformance model

Hello,

Here comes a more substantive comment on the Webarch document; I've
extracted from the document the list of constraints/principle/good
practices (attached as text) - using a simplistic xslt also attached.
I've tried to analyze the kind of requirements they were creating.

The 'subjects' [1] on which they apply (when defined) are in the last
call version:
* resource owners
* published of a URI
* (web) agents
* user agents
* authors of a specification
* format/language designers
* server managers
* specifications [which probably would be the most contentious wrt to
[1]]

Here are the issues that I have with these subjects:
* "resource owners" are not defined; the document details the various
ways a URI can be owned depending on its scheme, but it does not tell
what it means to own a resource; the fix might just to defer this
question to other social structures, but I think it is important to
clarify these questions before having the first requirement on "resource
owners"; it would also be a good idea to insist on the difference
between owning a URI and owning the resource identified by this URI

* "publisher of a URI": what is this? Is it the URI owner? Does it need
to be differentiated from the resource owner?

* "agents" vs "user agents": the two terms are used in the conformance
requirements; presumably, the user agents differ from the general agents
case in so that they act on behalf of someone (according to the
definition); but which agents don't?
Said otherwise, for which agents the principle "agents MUST NOT silently
ignore authoritative server metadata" doesn't apply?

* "authors of a specification" vs "language designer" vs "format
designer"
The distinction between format and language is said to be null in the
document; I believe that usually, format is associated to the syntactic
part of a language (which also includes the semantics); I think that at
least the terms should be used consistently (ie either 'language
designer' or 'format designer') in the conformance requirements, if only
for ease of reading.
Also, the terms "authors of a specifications" seems to be bound to the
same type of subjects, but probably with a wider scope - maybe is there
a way to merge all these terms in one?

* "server managers"
Recommendations for server managers seems to be misplaced in an
architectural document; I think they should belong to another document
(CHIPs [2] come to my mind)

* there is one instance of conformance requirement applied to
"specifications" (Specifications that use QNames to represent...); I
guess it should be re-targeted to "specification authors" or "language
designer" or something else. Or the contrary, which I would prefer
(except for the note on RFC Keywords usage) - that is, I think the TAG
should define what a "Web-friendly specification" (or coin a better
term) should allow, enforce, constrain. 

(I prefer this approach on the one defining requirements for authors
specifications, since I find it more natural to review a language saying
"it is web-friendly in so that...", "it is not web-friendly in so
that...", than to say "these authors are Web-morons" )

In any case, my general comment is that it would be better to reduce the
list of conformance subjects in the arch document:
- to avoid some of the fuzziness introduced by having non-defined
conformance subjects
- to make it easier for the reader to understand the requirements

Dom

1. Some would argue that these subjects should be agents; e.g.
http://www.w3.org/2001/01/mp23 ; I'm not raising an issue on this,
though, since I'm still unclear on all the aspects of it... See also
http://esw.w3.org/topic/RfcKeywords
2. http://www.w3.org/TR/chips
-- 
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/
W3C/ERCIM
mailto:dom@w3.org