Re: [hybi] [Uri-review] ws: and wss: schemes

[David Booth <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 20:43 -0400, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 8 Sep 2009 at 17:14, David Booth wrote:
> 
> > You seem to have missed the point.  A string like
> > "http://websockets.net/" is not *intrinsically* tied to the Web Sockets
> > protocol any more than the string "wss: is.  It only becomes tied to the
> > Web Sockets protocol if the social entity that has the *authority* to
> > decree such a link does so.  In the case of "wss:", that authority
> > belongs to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).  In the case
> > of "http://websockets.net/" that authority belongs to the owner of
> > websockets.net.  (See Architecture of the World Wide Web section
> > 2.2.2.1:
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#def-uri-ownership )
> > The principle is *exactly* the same.  
> 
> Not really, to me at least.  That would be like saying that because 
> you own that particular horse, you can declare its tail to be a leg 
> even if the general community of experts in horses and biology in 
> general have a definition of legs that it doesn't meet.
> 
> Since I own the dan.info domain, I get to define what any particular 
> URI within it (or its subdomains), like http://dan.info/FooBarBaz/ or 
> http://foo.bar.baz.dan.info/Some.Silly.Stuff, resolves to under the 
> HTTP protocol (or whatever other protocol might be referenced in the 
> URI scheme, like https://dan.info/Something.Else or 
> ftp://dan.info/OtherJunk/).  I can make it resolve to a picture of 
> me, a picture of a horse, a political rant, a redirect to a different 
> URI, a 404 Not Found error, or not resolve at all because the 
> hostname has no DNS record. 

Right.

> It doesn't, however, give me the right or 
> power to insist that the definition of the "http" scheme or its 
> associated protocol doesn't apply to my URIs, and instead those 
> particular URIs should be resolved using my own "FooBarBaz" protocol.

You're missing the point about *layering*.  You are correct that you
don't have the authority to *revoke* the HTTP semantics of your URI.
Rather, your new FooBarBaz semantics would be *layered*
(non-destructively) on top of the HTTP semantics.   

A FooBarBaz URI would still have its HTTP semantics -- that's the whole
point; that's what makes this layering technique useful -- but it *also*
acquires FooBarBaz semantics.  The FooBarBaz semantics will only be used
by those agents that recognize your "http://dan.info/FooBarBaz/" URI
prefix as having special significance.  Those agents could safely ignore
the additional FooBarBaz semantics if they chose, and merely fall back
to the HTTP semantics as non-FooBarBaz-aware agents must do.  But
presumably they will get additional benefit if they choose to recognize
the FooBarBaz semantics and use the FooBarBaz protocol.

In short, every FooBarBaz URI is also an http URI, just as every http
URI is also a URI. 


-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.