John Cowan wrote:
> Thomas Lord scripsit:
>
>
>> For example, in the Perl world, CPAN serves as the central naming
>> authority.
>>
>
> [tale of woe snipped]
>
> s/CPAN/ICANN/g and you have explained the problems with the URI-based
> scheme you are proposing.
You are very smart to note that ICANN creates an economic and political
problem in its role as name authority. You are absolutely correct that
people
should not design name-spaces that are rooted in ICANN-assigned names
unless they really intend to use that monopoly.
You are completely mistaken, however, to say that the ICANN problem
infects URI-based names. Authorities in URIs do not have to be or include
hostnames or IP addresses. Within a given community of discourse, the
scheme of the URI tells how to interpret the authority.
Schemer's could, for example, agree to allocate names using their GPS
coordinates plus UST timestamp as the authority. ICANN is not involved.
This does leave open the question "Who is the authority over URI scheme
names?" A good answer is "nobody in particular" -- the interpretation
of scheme names (e.g., "http:") is ultimately up to each application.
More formally, the interpretation of scheme names is really part of the
dynamic context within which processes run. While there are natural
rivalries over such scheme names, those rivalries are easy to avoid in
practice
because nobody needs very many scheme names and any number of people
can share a single scheme name.
> Nevertheless, the computer-naming world has
> drunk down the no-central-names approach to the dregs (saith the former
> ...!uunet!hombre!marob!magpie!cowan) and decided that the costs of the
> central registry are worth it.
>
>
By "computer-naming world" you mean the parts of society that are
concerned with naming physical computers, right? I assume you
aren't claiming that whenever software engineers want a global naming
system they reach for a central authority because that would be a
pretty bald-faced counter-factual claim.
-t
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Received on Wed Jun 27 2007 - 17:15:49 UTC