[OpenID] FW: PROPOSAL: An Extension to transform an EMail Addressto an OpenId URL

[Robert Yates]

On 2/10/07, Drummond Reed <drummond.reed at cordance.net> wrote:

> Why? IMHO, the foundation of OpenID is "resolvable identity endpoints" --
> endpoints on the Internet that represent what the Identity Gang lexicon
> calls "digital subjects" (http://cis-berkman.editme.com/DigitalSubject).
> Note that while digital subjects includes users, they can also include other
> resources like organizations, applications, etc.
>
> While it's true that all URIs can be used to identify digital subjects, the
> OpenID framework works with that subset of URIs that are *resolvable* (see a
> long blog post I did on that subject last year -
> http://www.equalsdrummond.name/?p=70). Resolvability is a vital
> characteristic of OpenID identifiers (URLs or XRIs) because that's how you
> can get to the metadata needed to provide identity services (authentication,
> authorization, attribute exchange, messaging, etc.) within the OpenID
> framework.

What does "resolvable" mean in a technical sense though?  Isn't
"resolvable" in openid simply a set of rules that converts a URI into
an XRDS / Yadis document?  How is a set of rules that maps an e-mail
URI to an XRDS / Yadis document any different from the sets of rules
that maps an xri URI or even the http / https URIs to a XRDS / Yadis
document?

David has a proposal that with a slight tweak would make e-mail URI's
directly "resolvable" to an XRDS / Yadis document. Isn't that in line
with your definition?

Rob