Subject: [urn] credentials

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2014 19:30:46 +0000

We don't usually give credentials in IETF discussions,  ideas should stand on their own.

Some relevant past writings in Digital Library identifiers:

September 1998 tutorials on web technology at digital library conference
http://larry.masinter.net/eudl/
including some discussion of URNs
http://larry.masinter.net/eudl/eudl-part3b.pdf#page=82
discussion in 1995 paper for INET'95 discussion of identifiers
http://larry.masinter.net/docweblib.html#docids

For this discussion, I still like ewhat I said in 1999
"Problems URIs Don't Solve*
* but people think they should"

http://larry.masinter.net/9909-twist.pdf

I have a few other digital library papers which should give me sufficient credentials to be able to at least be taken seriously when discussing the topics of what librarians do or don't need, in a discussion of whether IETF should change its standards to meet those needs.

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 16:13:32 -0400

--On Sunday, 06 July, 2014 19:30 +0000 Larry Masinter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> September 1998 tutorials on web technology at digital library
> conference http://larry.masinter.net/eudl/
>...

Larry,

I wasn't (and am not) trying to start a credentials fight.  At
the same time, I've trying really hard to avoid getting bogged
down in discussions that start from "I have an idea and, because
I have it, it is at least as valid as your idea" and go downhill
from there.  As I said in Appendix A of the draft (which I hope
you have, or will, read), what is ultimately at issue here is
not whether you, or Juha (or the community from which he comes)
are "correct".  

The issue is whether, based on their experience, their perceived
needs should be accommodated.   I started to say "are entitled
to be accommodated", but that isn't ultimately the point either.
Instead, if they feel strongly enough about those needs --and
the WG has heard from far more than Juha, with people and
institutions of multiple varieties based on multiple countries
(and I've heard even more) to at least entertain a strong
hypothesis that they do-- will they move off to create a
standard of their own if the IETF says, e.g., "no, we, based on
the ideas of Larry or others, don't believe you need to do
that".   

I'm convinced that they will and am a bit surprised they haven't
done so already (Juha and others have been exerting superhuman
efforts to avoid that outcome).  YMMD, but I'm convinced that
the costs of two inconsistent definitions of "URN" would be
sufficiently high that it trumps the claimed advantages of
trying to preserve an overarching RFC 3986.  While the issues
are completely separate from the URN one, the view that
preservation of 3986 and its current definitions across the
whole range of whatever people choose to call URIs is not worth
shedding blood over (or even further constraining URNs or
slowing URNbis over) is somewhat reinforced by efforts in W3C
and WHATWG to change the URL definition in ways that, to me,
also look incompatible with 3986.

  best,
    john