[Replying to Mark, only because he inspired to make the remark] On Apr 19, 2010, at 5:21 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote: > Couldn't IANA just implement the "search format" as > > http://www.iana.org/assignments/Registry-Name > > and cut out the middle man? > > Regarding the "20 year" argument, it seems to imply that one of the following will happen in that time scale: > > 1) HTTP will be replaced by another protocol in a non-backwards-compatible fashion, and support in software is dropped (i.e., obviating all existing HTTP URLs), or > 2) URIs themselves will be replaced in a non-backwards-compatible way, and URI-handling software disappears (obviating all URIs, period), or > 3) The domain name system crashes and burns irrevocably, or > 4) IANA loses legal control of iana.org, or > 5) IANA lacks the organisational ability to guarantee stable identifiers for its products, or > 6) No Web serving software is available that gives IANA the ability to control their own URI path components, and it is illegal for them to write it themselves. > > If #1 or #2 happens (unlikely), we will have enough warning to revise the RFCs as appropriate, or provide a mapping to the new way of doing things. Not fun, but a reasonably calculated risk, given the shelf life of most IETF products. > > If #3 - #6 happens (likelihood is reader-deterimined), we've got far worse problems than some RFCs whose registries can't be easily found -- A STATE THAT I WOULD MENTION WE ARE ALREADY IN TODAY. Slightly orthogonal to how one approaches long-term stability of references in RFCs there is the issue of the needs of the IETF. It is not completely hypothetical that in a far, far future there will other or even multiple 'vendors' that offer the service[*]. It that context stability is important too. See http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-iab-iana The IAB is close to finalizing that document. --Olaf [*] In fact there are two organizations today, see Appendix A of draft-iab-iana ________________________________________________________ Olaf M. Kolkman NLnet Labs Science Park 140, http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/ 1098 XG Amsterdam _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf