Possibly Naive Question -Reply

No, there is much more at stake here. We are talking about developing
the protocol for managing documents on the Web. This involves access
to a variety of sources, only one of which is the traditional file system.
Of further interest is access authentication (notice I did NOT say ACL)
and document privacy (although this is a very sticky problem, see my
comments earlier today on the list server).

"Generation X" is going to require the secure and authenticated sharing
of documents to move various projects ahead. Traditional document
management system (DMS) functions like check-in, check-out, document
control, version control, etc. must be supported as well as the simple file
system access.

-src
Steve Carter
Novell

>>> Wayne C. Gramlich <gramlich@bigbang.eng.sun.com> 09/20/96
03:18pm >>>
All:

I just recently subscribed to the w3c-dist-auth@w3.org mail list.

After browsing the archives and meeting minutes for a while.
After reading Jim Whitehead's "Requirements on HTTP for Dist. Editing",
I found myself asking the question, "To a first approximation,
aren't we just reinventing a file system protocol (e.g. NFS,
Andrew, etc.)?"  Did I miss something important?  (Please, no
flame responses... I was not present at either of the first two
WG meetings, so I may be missing some important implicit context.)

Thanks,

-Wayne

Received on Monday, 23 September 1996 18:36:56 UTC