Re: DOI and the non-IETF tree

At 05:06 PM 2003-09-11, John Cowan wrote:
>(They get the short names because they were there first.)

That is the risk: that we as the IETF actually act like that.

For the man in the street, there is a benefit if widely used schemes
get plain names without a series prefix.  When IETF benefits the
man in the street, IETF benefits.

DOI sounds like a second run at defining URNs that seems to have
acquired a following and demonstrated interoperable practice.

That may merit a plain-Jane name.

Al

>Larry Lannom scripsit:
>
> > makes perfect sense to me. In olden days I had the simple view that uri
> > schemes were reserved for identifiers that had defined over-the-wire
> > protocols, but that seems to have withered over time, or maybe it was
> > always a misunderstanding.
>
>The mid: (message-ID) and cid: (content-ID) protocols for referring to mail
>messages and parts thereof, respectively, have never had any wire protocols
>tied to them, since the scheme-specific part is just a 
>foobar@bazquux.example.net
>string, not usable for retrieval.
>
> > 1. The distinction between IETF and non-IETF source and or continued
> > control of a scheme seems reasonable, but what is the advantage of
> > building it into the label? That is, what do I know about, say,
> > org-doi:10.123/456 that I don't know from doi:10.123/456?
>
>Because the IETF may wish to define a scheme called doi in the future.
>(They get the short names because they were there first.)  Qualifying the
>scheme name makes sense for the same reason that qualifying host names does.
>In the beginning, all Arpanet hosts had simple names maintained in a HOSTS.TXT
>file, but that doesn't scale -- too many people wanted to give their hosts
>simple names, and so the DNS hierarchy was born.
>
> > 2. Change control -- the IDF, to be sure, would consider itself the
> > authority for making changes in the meaning and use of DOIs and I would
> > look to the IETF for information on the details of FTP. But in what
> > formal sense does the IETF own change control on FTP?
>
>In the sense that the ftp: URI scheme is defined by a document under IETF
>change control, namely RFC 1738.
>
>--
>"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>

Received on Thursday, 11 September 2003 21:17:25 UTC