ietf-822
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RE: Message Header Field Registry - revised proposal

2002-02-21 16:38:38

At 11:17 AM 2/21/02 -0800, Jeff Stephenson wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Graham Klyne [mailto:GK-lists(_at_)ninebynine(_dot_)org]
> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 10:34 AM

> Having transient, non-permanent entries would break the RFC
> 1737 persistence requirements for URNs.

The paragraph you're referring to in RFC 1737 is (I think):

     It is intended that the lifetime of a URN be
     permanent.  That is, the URN will be globally unique forever, and
     may well be used as a reference to a resource well beyond the
     lifetime of the resource it identifies or of any naming authority
     involved in the assignment of its name.

Yes, and there's also this:

   o Global uniqueness: The same URN will never be assigned to two
     different resources.

If every hare-brained idea for a new header gets a permanently allocated name to satisfy this condition, then the interesting parts of namespace are potentially liable to to be committed. I think it's helpful if a degree of community consensus is required to obtain a unique, permanent allocation.

It specifically states that the resource itself needn't be permanent,
just the URN.  As long as the registry entries are given unique and
non-repeating URNs, a single registry would satisfy RFC 1737.

I understand the document to be saying something slightly different; viz the other point noted above. Once a name is allocated permanently in this way, then some record must be maintained as a guard against reallocation.

#g


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Graham Klyne                    Baltimore Technologies
Strategic Research              Content Security Group
<Graham(_dot_)Klyne(_at_)Baltimore(_dot_)com>    <http://www.mimesweeper.com>
                                <http://www.baltimore.com>
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