- From: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:11:54 +0200
- To: Larry Masinter <LMM@acm.org>
- Cc: "'Pat Hayes'" <phayes@ihmc.us>, "'Roy T. Fielding'" <fielding@gbiv.com>, "'Jonathan Rees'" <jar@creativecommons.org>, "'Julian Reschke'" <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, "'HTTP Working Group'" <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>, <www-tag@w3.org>
Thanks Larry. I wish I could talk with such clarity. I want to take the discussion with Pat a bit further, but will do so off-list. (Tomorrow, Pat -- I need to mull it over a bit.) I initially joined the thread to say this: The HTTP spec, with Roy's proposed new 303 text, accommodates all Semantic Web use cases I can think of. Including using HTTP URIs to denote people. It's good to see httpRange-14 slowly "trickle down" into the specs. Cheers, Richard On 14 Jul 2009, at 21:46, Larry Masinter wrote: > This conversation is filling my mailbox. Some general > observations: > > (Pat, your arguments are laced with ad hominem, which makes reading > the dialog unpleasant. I don't think Richard is being > silly, intellectually dishonest, bloody arrogant, or any of the > other terms you've used, please refrain.) > > It's the nature of standards discussions that people speak > their point of view; doing so isn't arrogant. > > It is the nature of technical specifications that it is frequently > necessary to take normal English words in particular technical > way; it is not intellectually dishonest to do so. > > It is good practice for technical specifications in standards > groups to say as little as possible in order to meet the > needs of interoperability and the purpose for which the > specification is being written. > > It is not necessary or even possible for a technical specification > to answer questions that may be fundamental for applications > that are outside of its scope. It is common, reasonable, > and traditional for standards specifications to "not answer" > questions because answering the question isn't necessary > for the purpose for which the standard was written. > > It isn't necessary for the proper functioning of the web and > to accomplish interoperability of web clients and servers > to agree on how to use HTTP URIs and the HTTP protocol -- > for that purpose, it isn't necessary to answer the question > of whether a HTTP URI can identify a person. > > It may be necessary to answer the question in a technical > specification for the semantic web and in the RDF > specification -- but the answer more likely > belong in those specifications and not in the > IETF HTTP specification. > > It may be necessary for the IETF HTTP specification > be edited in a way that made it clear that it didn't > contain the answer to this question, but I'm not > sure where to draw the line of describing things > it doesn't answer. > > It's easy to imagine a system in which a URI is used > to identify a person for the purpose of that system. > But I can't see how IETF, W3C, or continued discussion > on any of our mailing lists are going to converge > any time soon on answers to the philosophical questions > that have been with us for millennia. What is it > that "Pat Hayes" identifies, anyway? Can I use > mailto:phayes@ihmc.us as a URI to identify you? > Well, that's a question outside of the "mailto:" > URI spec, I think. > > Perhaps there needs to be a better way of distinguishing > the statements "this specification does not limit the scope > of applicability" and "this specification applies in all > circumstances". > > If you had some better way of phrasing it so that it would > be clear the former was meant rather than the latter, I > think that would be helpful. > > The fact that something "does matter" -- to you, to the > RDF community, to the W3C, to the world at large -- > does not mean that it is appropriate to "matter" in > the context of the HTTP spec. > > It is an important design principle for developing > specifications to keep specifications orthogonal: for the purposes > of the HTTP protocol, it does not matter what resources > are exactly. For the purpose of resource identification, it should > not matter what the protocol is; tying semantic web > interpretation to a particular error code in the HTTP > protocol seems like bad design to me. > > The idea that the HTTP working group should care about the > semantic web and change its specification to meet some > semantic web requirement for use of HTTP URIs in semantic > web applications -- well, that raises several red flags > for me, that we're building specifications that are not > sufficiently orthogonal that things that *shouldn't* matter > are taken as important questions that *must* be answered. > > The HTTP specification is *not* about what a "resource" is. > It *is* about how to use and implement the HTTP protocol. > > There continues to be some confusion in the discussion between > "URI" and "HTTP URI" that I find disturbing and confusing, because > I think sometimes statements about one are attributed to the > other. Not all URIs are HTTP URIs. Please try to be more careful. > > Regards, > > Larry > -- > http://larry.masinter.net > > >
Received on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 01:12:33 UTC