RE: DOI and the non-IETF tree

I recently gave the IDF (International DOI Foundation) view of the proposed
non-IETF tree vnd-, in the context of registering DOI: as a URI. 

Larry Masinter commented:

> I think that you're saying that you don't like the
> 'vnd-' tree because you think the scope recommended
> in it is broad enough.
>

(probably meant is NOT broad enough?) and suggested changing it somewhat
along the lines of mime types, inviting comment to uri@w3.org.   The latest
draft from Larry on non-IETF trees has the following scope for vnd:

> The "vnd-" tree is used for URI schemes associated with available 
> products or services; "vendor" or "producer" are construed as 
> equivalent and broadly. [probably meant: "broadly associated with 
> commercially available products or services"] The registration 
> belongs to the vendor or 
> organization producing software or offering a service that utilizes 
> the URI scheme. Registration in the vendor tree is distinguished by 
> the leading "vnd-", followed, at the discretion of the registration, 
> either by the scheme name or (preferably) by an IANA-approved 
> designation of the producer's name, followed by the specific scheme 
> name. Designations of producers should match those used for media 
> types, and follows the same criteria.
>

The IDF represents a fairly broad community of content producers (right now
it includes some technical publishers, government bodies, libraries, etc.
but can embrace all media types); we have 10 million DOIs assigned so far
with an accelerating growth.  But I think that there is a misunderstanding
here. DOI is not a commercially available product or service, any more than
URLs are a commercially available product or service. It is equally true for
both that: 
1) there is no charge at point of use, 2) there is a charge for a naming
authority, and 3) the identifier can be used in the context of a commercial
service. 
There are differences:  DOIs are attempting to offer a more managed system
with more uniformity (through mandated policy including specified associated
data) across DOIs than across URLs; they are assigned via registration
agencies instead of at the individual web administrator level; and this
system requires funding.   DOI registration agencies manage their businesses
however they want, while paying a fee to the central organization for
service redundancy, policy development, and so on. For example the largest
of the current registration agencies, Crossref, is a non-profit consortium
of 240 journal publishers and 50 or so affiliated libraries and companies
who came together because reference linking across journals using URLs
wasn't working (journals move from one publisher to another, URL schemes
change, etc.) and they needed a level of abstraction above URLs. DOIs work
well for them.   But they aren't selling DOIs any more than Amazon is
selling URLs: they are in the journal reference linking business.  Other
applications are in other businesses. The IDF is itself a non-profit
organisation controlled by its participants.  

The phrase 'non-IETF tree' had a different connotation for me and some IDF
colleagues, i.e. "not arising out of an IETF WG". Indeed, DOI did not go
through an IETF WG:  but we brought it to the IETF because we agree that
there should be a central place for URI registration.  Larry M. made an
excellent case for putting Engineering in IETF reviews and as noted earlier
we will respond to that. But I'd like to note that if the vnd- scheme (even
if renamed as a recent suggestion) continues (as it looks now) to carry a
connotation of lightweight, second-class citizen status, we feel that
doesn't meet our needs. 

Norman Paskin
International DOI Foundation
www.doi.org



-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Masinter [mailto:LMM@acm.org]
Sent: 06 September 2003 18:34
To: 'Paskin, Norman (DOI-ELS)'; uri@w3.org
Cc: braden@ISI.EDU; doi-twg@doi.org; rawg@doi.org; iesg@ietf.org
Subject: RE: DOI and the non-IETF tree


I have (finally)  submitted a new version of the vnd scheme:
  draft-king-vnd-urlscheme-03.txt

also available as 
   http://larry.masinter.net/vndurl.html (.txt, .xml)

I rewrote the section on the context of use to remove
the language about "In the development of new products"
and tried to make the language/context match that for
the vnd. / prs. MIME trees in RFC 2048.

The document is still pretty rough, I'm afraid.

discussion -> uri@w3.org


Larry

Received on Thursday, 11 September 2003 06:55:15 UTC