[OpenID] Calling OpenID 2.0 editors (was RE:Problems withOpenID and TAG httpRange-14)

[Brendan Taylor]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 10:25:35AM -0700, Johnny Bufu wrote:
>
> On 6-Mar-08, at 11:44 AM, Noah Slater wrote:
>
> > It's not an assumption, it's bordering on the absurd that I have
> > requote:
> >
> > RFC 2616 § 10.3.4:
> >
> >   The new uri is not a substitute reference for the originally
> > requested resource.

> By your reasoning, if URL-1 303-redirects to URL-2, which in turn
> sends a "welcome to URL-2" in the HTML body, a browser fetching
> URL-1 SHOULD (or MUST?):
>
> - display URL-1 in the location bar
> - parse the HTML content and replace every appearance of URL-2 with
> URL-1
> - etc.

Yup, that's clearly absurd. Either the editors of the RFC were off their
rockers, or you're misinterpreting the spec. :)

There's a subtle distinction that I think you're missing.

When a server sends a 301 Moved Permanently, it's saying "I know the
document you're talking about. It's moved to <Location>."

When a server sends a 303 See Other, it's saying "I know the thing
you're talking about. You can get a document about it at <Location>."

When the HTTP RFC says URL-2 shouldn't be substituted for URL-1, it's
talking about URLs as identifiers. Browsers don't deal in identifiers,
they deal in documents; a browser's location bar shows the URL of the
document it's displaying, not the URL of the thing that the document is
about.

OpenID, on the other hand, deals in identifiers. The documents involved
are just a convenient way of figuring out what identifiers to use.

The URL <http://bytesexual.org/> identifies a person.

The URL <http://bytesexual.org/about/> identifies a document about the
person <http://bytesexual.org/>.

Surely an OpenID identifies a person rather than a document?
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openid.net/pipermail/openid-general/attachments/20080312/bd4fa6d6/attachment-0002.pgp>