--On Thursday, July 02, 2015 21:01 +0200 Stephane Bortzmeyer
<bortzmeyer(_at_)nic(_dot_)fr> wrote:
On Thu, Jul 02, 2015 at 11:08:12AM -0400,
John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> wrote
a message of 35 lines which said:
Maybe the choice of DOIs is more or less arbitrary or
reflects a too-narrow community of discussion
There is a very aggressive marketing from the private comopany
which sells DOIs. Like most marketing, it relies partly on
pure lies (for instance FUD against the properties of the
URIs). It seems to be often successful.
Just in the interest of separating one sort of FUD from another.
DOIs (as distinct from Handle, Handle systems, and several other
things) are allocated at the top level by the International DOI
Foundation, acting as a Registration Authority under ISO
26324:2012. The DOI Foundation accredits "registration
agencies" who. at least in theory, compete with each other (and
the I-D calls out the one of those that is being used by the
IAB/ RFC Editor).
Yes, there has been some aggressive marketing. I haven't seen
the FUD about URIs to which you refer. Although I have no doubt
that it exists if you say it does, I've generally found the
senior people of the International DOI Foundation fairly open to
working with others to make different types of ideas and
identifiers more compatible (certainly no worse about that than
the IETF often is).
However, there are enough organizations involved in the DOI
world that talking about, or making claims about, "the private
comopany which sells DOIs" is almost certainly misleading or at
least paints an unspecified entity with two broad a brush.
Finally, to address another FUD-like comment (I can't remember
by whom), while ISO 26324:2012 is, like most other ISO
Standards, associated with a restrictive copyright and a very
high sales/distribution charge, as far as I know, all of the
significant DOI documentation is available in the _DOI
Handbook_, which is available without charge at
http://www.doi.org/hb.html.
I think there may be reasons why DOIs are not an optimal choice.
The decision to use them was apparently made months ago and,
while I think it may be appropriate for the community to review
how that decision was made and who is accountable and for what,
I think it is much too late to say "don't do DOIs".
I also think there are some other identifiers that might be
equally or more appropriate. People who favor them should
probably have a discussion with the RSE (and, as needed, the
IAB), about whether it would be appropriate to support their
preferred identifiers too. If the answer is "yes", start
writing. If it is "no", then, well, that would make a much
more interesting discussion for this list, at least for me.
john