--On Thursday, July 02, 2015 06:18 +0000 "Eggert, Lars"
<lars@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2015-7-1, at 20:34, IAB Chair <iab-chair@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> This is an announcement of an IETF-wide Call for Comment on
> draft-iab-doi-04.
I have sent comments separately to the IAB list, as requested,
but, since the IETF list seems interested in discussing this,
three high points (one of which was not in that earlier note):
(1) The use of the format 10.17487/RFC1149 is ill-advised on
internationalization and future-proofing grounds. It would have
been far better to assign a code, say "1", to the RFC series,
reserve all other codes for future use, and use something more
like 10.17487/1.1149.
(2) While the IAB (and RFC Editor) are not required to ask the
community before making a change like this, making the change
(effectively irreversibly) and then asking for comments seems to
me to be in bad taste. The RFC Editor has already modified the
index and published documents containing DOIs in this form (see
the References section of RFC 7504 for examples of post-approval
changes to that section). Identifier stability considerations
suggest that their use, and that format, are now irreversible.
The format issue mentioned in (1) was decided on without an
opportunity for broad community input (it may have been raised
in the RSOC, a closed group, or on the rfc-interest list, but
neither constitutes the broad community). The IAB or RFC
Editor, or the IAOC on their behalf, have presumably signed a
contract with a DOI-issuing entity that contains provisions the
community has not seen. And now the IAB is asking for
comments? If the intent was to have the community look for
editorial mistakes, the request should have said that.
Probably, people who don't approve of this way of doing things
should challenge the IAB on that subject and/or seek to identify
the IAB members who pushed this through before irreversible or
contractual actions are taken and discuss that behavior with the
Nomcom.
(3) I am now aware of three important efforts to establish a
standard for persistent identifiers for documents and data that
are available electronically or referenced electronically: the
semantic web's "entity registration system" (ERS), DOIs, and the
IETF's URNs. The three specs do not have the same scope, but
their scope overlaps significantly. There may well be others.
To the extent to which this document constitutes having the IAB
pick a winner or deciding that the winner was picked elsewhere
and recognizing that, it raises some important issues with the
"eat your own dogfood" issue and the IAB's position on the
active URNBIS WG. For those who have forgotten or aren't old
enough to remember, it may also be worth noting that the
so-called "Kobe incident" that set off the reorganizations that
produced the Nomcom and the current decision-making structure of
the IETF was essentially about the IAB making technology choices
for the community that the community did not support.
best,
john