Subject: Updating IANA "Operating System Names" registry

From: Anthony Bryan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:39:42 -0500

Hi,

The IANA registry "Operating System Names" found at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/operating-system-names is missing a
few recent common OSes.

LINUX-2.6
WINDOWS-NT-6
WINDOWS-NT-6.1

There's MACOS but not MACOS-10.0 or MACOS-X-10.0, MACOS-X-10.1, etc.

I've been told the registry can be updated with an email, so I wanted
to check if anyone had suggestions for other additions?

(My ID http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bryan-metalink allows file
publishers to list what OS a file is intended for).

-- 
(( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]
  )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:29:08 -0800

>http://www.iana.org/assignments/operating-system-names is missing a

...where "few" means "most".

This registry is a complete mess. Linux is listed by kernel versions, not distro versions, but FreeBSD is only listed once.

>publishers to list what OS a file is intended for).

Given the state of the registry and the number of people-hours that will be wasted on arguing what should and should not be in it, I suggest that simply removing "The IANA registry named "Operating System Names" defines values for OS types." and then letting the registry rot is probably a better use of everyone's time.

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:15:49 -0500

> http://www.iana.org/assignments/operating-system-names is missing a

More to the point, who uses this registry and who cares?  It is old,
and probably stopped serving a useful purpose years ago.

What protocols make use of the registry?

Absent a real usage, the registry should either be shutdown, or just
quietly left alone.

Thomas

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:32:25 -0700

> Absent a real usage, the registry should either be shutdown, or just

+1. Who uses it, how extensively, and (these days) why?

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:07:18 -0500

--On Tuesday, January 26, 2010 13:15 -0500 Thomas Narten
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> http://www.iana.org/assignments/operating-system-names is
>> missing a few recent common OSes.
> 
> More to the point, who uses this registry and who cares?  It
> is old, and probably stopped serving a useful purpose years
> ago.
> 

Sigh.

The FTP SYST command, among other things.   SYST is much less
important now than it was a few decades ago when there was a lot
more diversity of hardware architecture and operating systems,
but there is what we would now describe as a normative reference
from RFC 959 (STD 9) to this registry.

The DNS HINFO record is also supposed to use them.  While I
haven't see a lot of uses of HINFO recently in the public DNS,
we haven't deprecated the RR type either.

I have generated an errata entry for RFC 959 noting that SYST
should point to this registry rather than pointing more vaguely
to "Assigned Numbers".  I will leave similar comments on the
definition of HINFO and possibly a modification to the new FTP
Commands and Extensions registry (to note that this registry
specifies the parameter space for SYST) to someone who has more
energy and time for that kind of work.

With a quarter-century's hindsight, it is clear that this
registry, and the names in it, should have used structured names
of some style such as 

   OperatingSystem Delimiter Version Delimiter Subversion

possibly with explicit registration for only the first element,
but it is a little late now.   Getting the list up to date and
into shape would clearly require significant work, but I don't
think we should discourage new registrations by anyone who
thinks that particular entries are needed.

> Absent a real usage, the registry should either be shutdown,
> or just quietly left alone.

I don't see how one can shut down a registry that is used
normatively by two full standards (FTP and DNS) without first
deprecating the FTP Command and the DNS RR that use it.
Continuing the long-standing practice of neglect unless new
entries are actually needed seems entirely reasonable and has
the advantage of not requiring any action.  In general, it is
probably better to believe that registries should be updated
when someone has a substantive need for new entries than to try
to create some abstract requirement to add entries for their own
sake.

I am tempted to ask why we are even wasting time discussing this
registry, but I won't.

      john