Re: [urn] Moving ahead with draft-spinosa-urn-lex

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

Thanks for this, Dale: this seems like a reasonable way forward to me, at
this time.
Do others agree?

Barry

On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 8:39 PM Dale R. Worley <[e-mail]> wrote:

> My apologies for not working on this earlier.
>
> The current draft of "urn-lex" is draft-spinosa-urn-lex-12.  People have
> criticized its proposed URN system in many ways, but it seems to me that
> most of the criticisms are "bibliographic", they concern good ways to
> create identifiers for written works.  As such, the IETF is not a good
> forum for correcting most of those problems.
>
> My proposal is that we implement "rough consensus and running code" --
> obtain a usable registration of the "lex" URN namespace so that the
> authors and ITTIG can put the "lex" URNs into practice.  The process of
> using the URNs will educate the authors regarding the correct resolution
> of the various problems, and will likely cause them to later submit a
> revised registration.
>
> That is, the registration we create at this time will be understood to
> be experimental in nature.
>
> In order to be suitable as an "experimental" registration, there are a
> few problems that must be resolved:
>
> 1. The URN syntax must conform to the generic URN syntax.
>
> 2. The requirements of uniqueness and persistence must be met.  (That
> is, any URN designates at most one resource, and the resource that it
> designates must not change over time.  However, it is permissible to
> have multiple URNs designate the same resource.)
>
> 3. The process or authority that assigns each URN must be well-defined.
>
> Item 1 is taken care of, in that the syntax in -12 conforms (as far as I
> can tell) to the URN syntax in RFC 8141.
>
> Item 2 is the responsibility of the Jurisdictional Registrars, in the
> same way that the naming authorities of many other URN namespaces are
> responsible for uniqueness and persistence.
>
> Item 3 requires that a registry of jurisdiction codes and Jurisdictional
> Registrars be maintained.  Section 11.2 of the -12 draft proposes that
> IANA maintain the registry.  Given the experimental nature of the URN
> registration, it seems to me to be premature to involve IANA, especially
> since the principles that the Designated Export must implement are
> likely to change over time.  Instead, it seems to me that the best
> choice for registrar is ITTIG-CNR, the proposer and developer of the URN
> namespace.
>
> When the namespace definition is transitioned to a non-experimental
> status (including fixing a good set of policies to assign jurisdiction
> codes), the registry can be transferred to IANA to implement the proven
> policies.
>
> Following this path requires only small changes for -13, viz., updating
> section 11.2.
>
> Dale
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Archived discussions:
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/urn/current/msg03828.html
> 16 Nov 2017
> "urn:lex draft v. 12"
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/urn/current/msg03811.html
> starting 20 Sep 2017
> "Request for new URN namespace review: LEX"
> Message-Id: <
> [e-mail]>
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/urn-nid/current/msg01270.html
> starting 29 Apr 2014
> "Publication request for draft-spinosa-urn-lex"
> Message-Id: <CALaySJJk5YiCQZqt6WoWkqfAzi2A04HEAH=
> [e-mail]>
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/urn-nid/current/msg01204.html
> starting 27 Mar 2013
> "Application for a formal URN NID"
> Message-Id: <23A64284-6B03-4B24-B680-54A61E96BECA at ittig.cnr.it>
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/urn-nid/current/msg01059.html
> 15 Oct 2009
> "URN LEX Namespace submission"
>
-- 
Barry
--
Barry Leiba  ([e-mail])
http://internetmessagingtechnology.org/