Re: My conversation with Sean Martin about LSIDs

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Before we resume normal service in the form of lots of pointed
questions and obscure RFC references (:-), I'd like to follow up on
Noah's posting at the meta level, as it were.

Contrary to what you might think, the TAG is not engaged in playing
Good cop (NM)--Bad cop (HST) with LSIDs.  In particular, my goal is
definitely _not_ to say, at the end of some branch or another of our
ongoing exchange, "Aha!  So you admit that http would have been
better, and accordingly will change/abandon the LSID spec. forthwith."

Speaking personally, at least, and I think for the rest of the TAG,
we're not engaged in an effort to trash the LSID design, or get it
withdrawn, or anything like that.  That train has definitively left
the station.  What I _am_ trying to do is understand the requirements
behind the LSID design as clearly as possible, so that I can then make
the URNsAndRegistries-50 finding as useful as possible, by identifying
exactly how http does/does not address those requirements. Then when
the next group with requirements similar to the Life Science
community's comes along, they can see more clearly what exactly the
tradeoffs are and make a well-informed decision.

I'm very grateful to Sean for engaging in what you might think of as a
Socratic dialogue in which we each learn more about the other's
requirements and expectations and about the capabilities of various
technologies.  

ht
- -- 
 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 Wednesday, 26 July 2006 13:00:05 UTC