Re: [urn] Re: Proposal: urn:local: namespace for context-scoped identifiers

Hi.  Due in large measure to lack of time, I usually stay out of
these discussions but this one seems to require a comment from my
perspective.  Peter, feel free to copy this back to the IETF URN list
if that would be helpful.  

I think what I'm about to say is consistent with earlier comments by
Martin, Dale, and, to some extent Ted, but maybe one more voice and
perspective would be helpful.

Since the very beginning, circa 1993 or 1994, of the discussions that
ultimately evolved into today's definition of URNs, the idea was to
have a collection of namespaces that were well and clearly defined
wrt syntax, semantics, and allocations within a particular namespace
and that were at least potentially global.  The notion of "you get to
figure out what this means and what its rules are based on private
agreements or within your local context" (whatever the latter means)
is completely contradictory to that principle.   Even the later
relaxation of the rules to allow registration of names for namespaces
that were less clearly and publicly defined to prevent name conflicts
is still consistent with that original principle.  What we've
occasionally referred to as Humpty Dumpty namespaces -- ones whose
meaning is whatever some (often self-appointed) local authority says
they mean -- are not.

So, if there is a need to do this (I have no position on that), it
isn't a URN but either some other URI type or, possibly, some new
special case within the URL space.  A special interpretation of
"file://" might work although I'm generally skeptical of special
interpretations of such types.  "local:" or maybe "mwwtiml:" (Means
Whatever We Think It Means Locally), perhaps.  But not a URN.

    john



--On Monday, January 26, 2026 08:18 -0700 Peter Saint-Andre
<stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:

> [Moving urn@ietf.org to bcc]
> 
> On 1/26/26 7:03 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> 
>> I wanted to briefly share an observation that motivated the
>> original  proposal and may be relevant to whether a URI scheme is
>> worth pursuing.
>> 
>> In two separate, unprompted cases, different large language models 
>> generating structured data independently produced identifiers of
>> the  form `urn:local:` and, in another instance, `local://`. When
>> asked to  explain, the models described these as an intuitive way
>> to signal "local  by design". I appreciate we are somewhat in the
>> wild west in this regard  still. But it is likely that engineering
>> on the internet will  increasingly use such tools.
> 
> God help us when LLMs start registering URI schemes and URN
> namespaces.
> 
>> I don't present this as authoritative input, LLMs are not
>> standards  bodies. However, the convergent emergence is
>> interesting: systems  trained on existing URI/URN specifications
>> nonetheless reach for a  "local" identifier when faced with
>> this gap.
>> 
>> This suggests:
>> 1. There is a real unmet need for signaling context-scoped identity
>> 2. "local" is an intuitive and discoverable name for that
>> concept 3. Such identifiers are likely to appear in generated data
>> regardless of  formal standardization
>> 
>> Given the feedback in this thread, would there be interest in
>> exploring  `local:` as a URI scheme (not URN), incorporating the
>> constraints and  concerns raised here?
> 
> Perhaps, but thankfully that's not a job for the URN discussion
> list, which I've removed from this thread. :-)
> 
> Peter
> (as team lead for the URN expert review team)
> 
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Received on Monday, 26 January 2026 17:34:19 UTC