Re: Summary of 8 April 2002 TAG teleconference

> On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 11:20, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>   SW: There is a tone in the IETF about trying to
>   have a mechanism to resolve URNs.
>   TBL: Yes, those people who favor URNs in the
>   IETF claim that they are building a mechanism to
>   resolve URNs. We have a working resolution
>   mechanism; building a second one is in general a
>   bad idea.
> 
> Clarification request.  I assume that the URN resolution mechanism the
> IETF is building is DDDS.  What is the W3C's "working resolution
> mechanism"?

background - a fundamental assumption of the URN architecture is that
there cannot be any single resolution system for URNs - first, because 
there are too many parties who will insist on controlling it (this predated
the whole IAHC / ICANN mess but we were trying to avoid the problems that 
would soon plague DNS); and second, because we didn't think that any set 
of resolution protocols was likely to last forever, so there would always 
be a possibility of multiple resolution protocols during transition periods
even if not at other times.   hence, URNs are pure names - by design they are 
fundamentally divorced from any association with a resolution protocol.  

Keith

Received on Wednesday, 10 April 2002 11:02:35 UTC