W3C TAG Last Call Comment on RFC2717bis/RFC2718bis

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The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) would like to thank the authors 
of the draft RFC2717bis/RFC2718bis [1].  Your draft represents a 
significant contribution to the Web community.  It is very well written, 
covers a broad range of important and sometimes subtle points, and in 
general we are very pleased to support its progress through the IETF 
process.  We particularly appreciate the reference to our Architecture of 
the Worldwide Web (AWWW) document [2]. 

We do have one suggestion to which we hope you will give serious 
consideration.  Section 2.1 states:

"Because URI schemes constitute a single, global namespace, the unbounded 
registration of new schemes is harmful to the Internet community.  For 
this reason, new URI schemes SHOULD have clear utility to the broad 
Internet community, beyond that available with already registered URI 
schemes."

This is small step beyond what's already in RFC 2718, but we suggest that 
it would be useful to go further.  Specifically, we believe that it would 
be valuable to more clearly emphasize that barriers to new scheme creation 
must be high. Stated positively, we suggest that there be clearer 
encouragement to use existing schemes, and especially to use schemes that 
are widely deployed.  Our hope is that such guidance might in future 
prevent the registration of schemes such as dav: [3], an example of a 
scheme that we consider poorly motivated.   We note too that various 
commercial organizations continue to deploy schemes that are at best 
marginally different in function from existing schemes such as http. 
Perhaps a clearer explanation of the issues would be useful guidance for 
those proposing similar schemes in the future.  Note that the AWWW 
document does include some detailed discussion of the advantages of scheme 
reuse [4], and we invite you to reference that discussion normatively or 
otherwise should you find that helpful. 

Thank you again for your hard work on the draft, and for your 
consideration of these concerns. 

Henry S. Thompson
for the W3C Technical Architecture Group

[note -- followups to uri@w3.org, please]

References:

[1] http://ietfreport.isoc.org/all-ids/draft-hansen-2717bis-2718bis-uri-guidelines-05.txt
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/
[3] http://asg.web.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc2518.html#sec-8.1.1
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#URI-scheme
- -- 
 Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
                     Half-time member of W3C Team
    2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
            Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                   URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
[mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]
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Received on Tuesday, 30 August 2005 17:44:46 UTC