Re: Registration of acct: as a URI scheme has been requested

Hi Melvin,

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Melvin Carvalho
<melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I believe the current draft supports any URI.

true. that's why the acct: scheme is needed: to make sure user
accounts identified as user@host can be written down as something that
falls under "any URI". if you just write 'user@host' as a string, then
that's not a URI.

> Therefore, webfinger in theory does not have a dependency on acct:

that is an incorrect conclusion. in fact, the opposite is true.

In Webfinger, we talk of user accounts (user@host) as such, without
implying any reference to email or jabber. This gave us two options:

- change webfinger to say it accepts "either any URI, or bare
'user@host' strings"
- keep the "any URI" sentence in the spec, and make 'acct:user@host' a
URI scheme.

I think the first one would have been a simple solution, but it would
also have constituted a deviation from web architecture, using
"custom" strings instead of URIs. In my personal opinion, both options
had their merits. But that's not the point. The point is, after weeks
of discussion, the second one was chosen by the authors, and that's
why you are now seeing this thread at TAG.

Nobody is forcing you to use webfinger if you don't want to, but we
are already using webfinger, including the acct: scheme, in
production.

Therefore, IMHO anybody who wants to forbid what we do would need a
very good reason. It would damage the momentum of not only the
federated social web (of which webfinger is one of the cornerstones),
but also of "unhosted" web apps (we allow users to connect their
cross-origin remoteStorage via webfinger).

Please just allow us to use webfinger and be happy. :)


Cheers,
Michiel

Received on Friday, 22 June 2012 12:02:31 UTC