Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/urn/urn-archives/urn-ietf.archive.9704/000006_owner-urn-ietf _Wed Apr 2 16:45:55 1997.msg

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Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 16:45:24 -0500
From: Michael Mealling <[e-mail]>
Organization: Network Solutions
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To: Ryan Moats <[e-mail]>
Cc: Daniel LaLiberte <[e-mail]>,
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Subject: Re: [URN] urn: prefix is a brand name?
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Ryan Moats wrote:
> <snip>

Ok, I'm going to take a stab at this. I really shouldn't because I
have some really pressing stuff to do but I can't let this go on.

The only assumptions you get to make about a URI is that it identifies
something. You don't get to make assumptions about how persistant
it might be or whether it might get re-assigned. Now, some have said
that both of those things are sociological and, in so far as it ACTUALLY
BEING DONE by the entity on the other end, they are right.

What I and a lot of other people need is some way for anyone else to
look at an identifier and be able to make those assumptions that a
normal URI won't let us make without either a) knowing something about
each specific URI scheme or b) asking some net resource. We're not
saying
that urn: in any way gaurantees those assumption. It just says that,
"hey, when this person put this identifier within this class of URIs
they
understood that you get to make some assumptions about how they
are going to treat it."

Now, you can say that this is something that should be defined per
URI scheme but what we are recognizing is that there are several
possible schemes that have this important property and that this
property is important enough to use as a discriminator between
names and locators. Plus, whenever a new scheme or namespace comes
along we don't want or need to update the clients so that they 'know'
that a particular scheme has those properties. The client simply
knows this by the fact that the "urn:" is there.

-MM

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Michael Mealling    | 505 Huntmar Park Drive       | Phone:  [phone]
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