Re: [urn] [apps-discuss] URNs are not URIs (another look at RFC 3986)

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

Again, addressing just one point here:

Graham said this:
> DOIs
> are conceived as names, and have the appropriate management processes
> around them applicable to names.  But I have observed that in recent times,
> the preferred form for presenting DOIs to the Web has increasingly been in
> the form "http://dx.doi.org/..." or similar (see also: [1]).  I think this
> exemplifies something that MAY be used as both identifier and name.

Phill said this:
>> A string that *you* might *today* call a "name", might already be a
>> "locator" to somebody who's rigged a private resolution service. Ten years
>> from now, that "name" might be a "locator" to all of us.
>
> Which is exactly what I was saying.
> For example, UPC code for a can of baked beans is a URN.
> But if you go to Amazon you can use it as a locator, albeit mediated
> via UPS rather than TCP/IP.

I think both of these confuse the issue.  Given a name, we can often
turn it into a locator.  That's clear, and that's one thing that makes
names useful.  But I think we still need to keep in mind that the
names *aren't* locators.  If I can always take "urn:doi:xyz-abc",
transform it to "http://dx.doi.org/find/xyz-abc", and get a valid
locator for the thing named, that's great.  But it's still the case
that the former is a name and *not* a locator.  And if dx.doi.org goes
away at some point, the thing is still named by "urn:doi:xyz-abc",
even though I can no longer use that locator.

It's rather like using "Barry Leiba" to talk about me, and that's fine
as long as it's a reference.  But as soon as you need to *find* me,
you have to get a locator.  The locator might or might not contain my
name; it could be "[e-mail]", it could be my phone
number, it could be a URL for my web site, or it could be a suggestion
that you look here <http://www.the-craftsman-ale-house.com/> on a
Friday evening.

Again, for the purposes of abstraction, let's be sure to remember the
distinction, and to be clear about the scope of what we're discussing.

Barry