Re: [art] Against BCP 190

[Tony Finch <[e-mail]>]

Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 23/07/2019 16:46, Adam Roach wrote:
> >
> > The purpose of BCP 190 has never been to provide advantages to protocol
> > designers. That is, in fact, the opposite of its purpose. The purpose of
> > BCP 190 is to provide protections to the URI namespace and the people
> > who own its governance (e.g., domain owners) against protocol designers.
>
> Right. The difference with trans is that there aren't a mass
> of domain owners involved here, just a tiny tightly curated
> list of them and they're basically the ones who designed the
> protocol (give or take). There is no harm accruing here that
> I can see.

The problem that trans has also applies in circumstances where we might
expect much wider population of servers. It's a problem for any protocol
implemented as a server-side web app.

I have personal web space under https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~fanf/
where I can install web apps, and paths under that prefix have been
delegated to me. I can't use that web space to deploy anything restricted
by BCP 190, so BCP 190 has the opposite of its intended effect of allowing
web server admins and their users to control their URL space, and allowing
them to decide where they would like to install apps.

I understand the point of using .well-known for information about the
server itself or about the server's domain name. I don't understand the
value of forcing an app to use .well-known when (like trans) it has a
completely configurable URL prefix.

Tony.
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