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

Ah, I see where your confusion is coming from. The average user does
not know that www.vanity-domain.com/bob is a different URL from
vanity-domain.com/bob (or alternatively, that www.vanity-domain.com is
a different location than vanity-domain.com). We can thank all the
major browsers for that.

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 7:45 PM, Breno de Medeiros <breno@google.com> wrote:
> 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/
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> --Breno
>
> +1 (650) 214-1007 desk
> +1 (408) 212-0135 (Grand Central)
> MTV-41-3 : 383-A
> PST (GMT-8) / PDT(GMT-7)
>



-- 
--Breno

+1 (650) 214-1007 desk
+1 (408) 212-0135 (Grand Central)
MTV-41-3 : 383-A
PST (GMT-8) / PDT(GMT-7)

Received on Wednesday, 3 December 2008 03:54:24 UTC