Re: [Ltru] RE: Update ltru-initial-05 (was RE: Draft-14 ready...)

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Ted Hardie wrote:

> Historically, IANA has moved registries around their site as needed.

Unfortunately, yes. That works against the purposes (the very
raison d'etre) of IANA and the registries.

> If you include a URI, you force them to maintain that URI or redirects to
> an appropriate URI.

If only we could force them! But despite some problems in the past, I 
think we need to expect IANA to maintain such stability. The other option 
is to find another registration authority.

As Tim Berners-Lee puts it, "Cool URIs don't change",
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

> I would suggest a pointer to the IANA site instead,
> since that is likely more stable.

A URL _is_ a pointer - a specific, exact pointer. Referring generically to 
a site (with a domain name, if we can expect that to be stable) is not 
user-friendly at all. Saying things like "go to http://www.iana.org/,
then click on 'bar', then on 'foo', and select 'zap' from the dropdown 
menu" would look foolish and would not be stable at all but bind us to a 
particular site design, as opposite to a specific URL, which _can_ be kept 
working if a site is reorganized.

A stable URL is also essential for the ability to link to a document
in hypertext.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
Ltru@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru