Re: [urn] I-D Action: draft-saintandre-urn-example-00.txt

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 08/14/2012 09:59 AM, Andy Newton wrote:
> Given that URNs are suppose to have permanence or persistence or 
> whatever we are calling it today and a resolution mechanism, this 
> desire to shoehorn identifiers that need to qualify as a URI into the 
> URN system might be wrong. An identifier that must be a URI does not 
> necessarily need or have all the properties to be a URN. Just an 
> observation.
+1

URNs were intended to be _resource names_, i.e. names of resources 
rather than merely unique identifiers.  The expectation was that such 
resources would generally be at least potentially accessible over the 
network, and that it would be possible to resolve such names to resource 
locations.   Everyone agreed that it should be possible to assign URNs 
to resources that were not resolvable, or at least not resolvable for 
the time being.  But the idea that URNs are appropriate for use whenever 
someone needed a unique non-resolvable identifier that qualifies as a 
URI, always has struck me as bizarre and contrary to the intended 
purpose of URNs.

Keith