Proposal for Modularizing Auth 2.0 Discovery

[Mark Baker]

On 3/2/07, Gabe Wachob <gabe.wachob at amsoft.net> wrote:
> Hi Mark-
>         I think I understand your first point. I think FTP is a degenerate
> case though, because its just like HTTP in the sense that there's basically
> one way that everybody knows how to use an FTP URI to get at a *document*
> (e.g. the FTP protocol) -- in that way, its just like HTTP. Besides, nobody
> has a reason to use FTP URIs (though I'm sure someone will show me why I'm
> wrong!)

Sure, but ftp was just an example.  There might be any number of new,
useful URI schemes deployed in the future which become easily
dereferenceable.

>         As for URI squatting, I'm just not seeing the connection here. Who's
> squatting here on what URI space?

Time for an example I suppose ...

I own markbaker.ca., and publish http URIs in that namespace.  I might
(I don't) also have email addresses there, say mark at markbaker.ca.  If
a public standard were crafted which defined a mapping for
mailto:mark at markbaker.ca to something under http://markbaker.ca (say,
http://markbaker.ca/~mark), then by virtue of minting a new
markbaker.ca email address, the corresponding http URI is now
effectively reserved, and unavailable for me to use as anything other
than an alias.

There's also existing namespaces to consider, as such a mapping spec
would be affecting all existing published URIs, not just new ones.
What if I already had both http://markbaker.ca/~foobar and
mailto:foobar at markbaker.ca, but both were unrelated?

It's not "squatting" in the sense of a person other than me reserving
a name in my own space - at least not if the mapping is done to
prevent that from happening (which won't be trivial for schemes which
don't use the DNS).  But it's squatting in the sense that some
external force (the mapping spec) prevents me from using my namespace
the way I want.

I suggest just saying that any URI can be used, and let the
community/market decide what actually gets used.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com