Re: [apps-discuss] RFC 5785: Registration of .well-known services under HTTP to First Come

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

Roy,

On 1/14/16 7:15 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>> On Jan 14, 2016, at 7:01 AM, Eliot Lear <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> Mark,
>>
>> On 1/14/16 6:34 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>>> You can also register /.well-known/phks-protocols/ and do whatever you like under it.
>> By your own words, that's simply not true unless there is a
>> specification tied to it, and personally I think that's a very high
>> bar.
> Why is it a high bar to require a written description of the identified
> space?  It doesn't require an IETF spec.

Quoting RFC 5785:


>   Well-known URIs are registered on the advice of one or more
>    Designated Experts (appointed by the IESG or their delegate), with a
>    Specification Required (using terminology from [RFC5226]).  However,
>    to allow for the allocation of values prior to publication, the
>    Designated Expert(s) may approve registration once they are satisfied
>    that such a specification will be published.
>

That to me is problematic.  And so a spec does have to exist, and then
expert review has to happen.


>   Mark is right -- if there is a
> spec of why the identifier exists, the owner can do anything with further
> identifiers under that space.  A review is desired because almost half of
> all proposed uses of .well-known are poorly conceived and more effectively
> accomplished with a single link.  But the review does not require consent.

I don't exactly know what you mean by that last sentence.
>
> For example, PHB wants to do a standard name search of SRV after doing a
> DNS lookup and then use the SRV record to redirect to a reserved URI space.
> Sorry, that is brain-numbingly poor use of those protocols.  If the
> standard name is standard enough to use under .well-known, then it is
> standard enough to assign directly within DNS (just like www) by the
> same admin that would have crafted an SRV record, which saves two
> completely useless application redirects and a whole lot of ridiculous
> discussion on IETF registration lists.
>
> The discussion does not prevent a person from registering the space
> anyway, if they happen to be as stubborn as any one of us, but at least
> it gives us a record of why the identifier exists and maybe some legacy
> understanding of bad uses of that space.
>

Maybe that is the practice but that is not typical of other expert
reviews, Roy.

Eliot