Re: removing constraints on 'resource' [024-identity]

/ Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> was heard to say:
| Regarding...
|
| "Anything that has been named or described can be a resource."
| -- http://www.gbiv.com/protocols/uri/rev-2002/rfc2396bis.html#overview
|
| Based on discussion with TimBL and Roy and a few others,
| as well as review of this issue...
|
| 024-identity Resource should not be defined as anything that has
| identity
| http://www.gbiv.com/protocols/uri/rev-2002/issues.html#024-identity
|
| it seems more straightforward to just say
|
| 	A resource can be anything; familiar examples include an 	electronic
| document, an image, a service (e.g., "today's weather
| 	report for Los Angeles"), and a collection of other resources,
| 	but there is no constraint on what is a resource.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I agree that
anything can be a resource. On the other, it seems useful (to me, at
the moment) to distinguish the infinity of things that can be
resources from the finite number of things that actually are.

I have in mind something that does not have a URI (it's a virus on a
grain of barley in the stomach of a pink elephant in orbit around a
red dwarf). Until I (or someone) gives it a URI, it does not
participate in the web architecture, so what useful purpose is served
by calling it a resource in it's current "un-URI-ed" state?

Conversely, what harm is caused by saying that it isn't (yet) a resource?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited.
If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by
reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.