Re: Fallback flow for /site-meta for top level domains

The 'naked domain' version of the site may not be DNS-resolvable,
while the www. prepended version of the domain may be. In addition,
the fact that a resource URL does not exist (in the sense that it
might return a 404) does not mean that it cannot have meaningful
associated meta-data.


On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:40 PM, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net> wrote:
>
> On 03/12/2008, at 1:35 PM, Breno de Medeiros wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:24 PM, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 02/12/2008, at 1:25 PM, Dirk Balfanz wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Well, here is the scenario: I buy foobar.com for $3/year at
>>>> cheapdomains.com. I pay an extra dollar to have "email", which means I
>>>> tell
>>>> them where I want my email forwarded. I pick dirk@foobar.com to be
>>>> forwarded
>>>> to dirk@gmail.com. I pay another extra dollar per year for "web
>>>> hosting",
>>>> which means I get a web interface on cheapdomains.com to create some web
>>>> pages, which get served on www.foobar.com. I set up a couple of pages
>>>> there
>>>> with pictures of my cats or whatever and I am done.
>>>>
>>>> I now also want to use my email address dirk@foobar.com as my OpenID
>>>> identifier [1] because I heard that that will end my having to create
>>>> ever-more accounts on the web. I am told that in order to get that to
>>>> work I
>>>> need to host a page called "site-meta" on my site with some
>>>> weird-looking
>>>> text in it that I don't understand. But, hey, I know how to get that
>>>> served
>>>> off www.foobar.com so that's cool.
>>>>
>>>> I have never heard of DNS.
>>>>
>>>> Is that a use case we want to support?
>>>>
>>>> Dirk.
>>>>
>>>> [1] Let's assume that OpenID 3.0 and XRD 2.0 allow that and define some
>>>> way to discover OpenID endpoints from email addresses.
>>>
>>> /site-meta on http://foobar.com/ doesn't (and can't, on its own) make any
>>> authoritative assertions about mailto:dirk@foobar.com; even though the
>>> authority is the same, the URI scheme is different.
>>
>> The email address is a distraction here. The core issue is independent of
>> that.
>>
>> vanity-example.com (hosted only at www.vanity-example.com) is a small
>> site and wants to enable all their user URLs
>> www.vanity-example.com/bob, www.vanity-example.com/alice to be useful
>> as discovery endpoints for user services. Thankfully some other site,
>> more professionally managed, is willing to provide discovery services,
>> aggregation, etc., on behalf of the users of these vanity domains.
>
> You just lost me. Why is it important to have site metadata for a site that
> doesn't exist, if the e-mail issue is a distraction?
>
> --
> Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/
>
>



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Received on Wednesday, 3 December 2008 03:46:17 UTC