True, different name-resolution methods could be defined at the Operating
System level (I still remember writing code to work against NetInfo, for
instance – how many people remember that?). RFC 3986 recognizes as much.
Perhaps it would have been sufficient for RFC 7230 to limit the acceptable name
registries to those for which access is defined/enabled at the Operating System
level. That’s a fairly limited, defined set. It’s when we allow *applications*
to define their own name registries, that it becomes open-ended and “Authority”
for any given URI then becomes *non-definitive*, which pretty much defeats its
whole purpose.
(Yes, I realize that on some platforms, the distinction between application and
OS can be somewhat blurry).
- Kevin
From: Roy T. Fielding [mailto:fielding(_at_)gbiv(_dot_)com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 1:05 PM
To: Darcy Kevin (FCA)
Cc: Alec Muffett; Joe Hildebrand; Edward Lewis; Ted Hardie;
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; Richard Barnes; dnsop(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; Mark
Nottingham
Subject: Re: [DNSOP] Last Call: <draft-ietf-dnsop-onion-tld-00.txt> (The .onion
Special-Use Domain Name) to Proposed Standard
On Aug 10, 2015, at 3:54 PM, Darcy Kevin (FCA)
<kevin(_dot_)darcy(_at_)fcagroup(_dot_)com<mailto:kevin(_dot_)darcy(_at_)fcagroup(_dot_)com>>
wrote:
In retrospect, the definition of the “http” and “https” schemes (i.e. RFC 7230)
should have probably enumerated clearly which name registries were acceptable
for those schemes,
I generally try to avoid enumerating things that are known to be false. All URI
schemes that use authority
intentionally refer to the local mechanism of name lookup, even if that name
lookup only uses DNS as the last
in a long line of alternative registries. The client is responsible for
choosing a mechanism which produces
a correct mapping for any given authority, regardless of whether that is
defined for them by /etc/host, WINS,
DNS, third-party https-based DNS lookup, etc. The folks referring to resources
using those schemes are
responsible for making those references unambiguous, usually by naming
convention rather than any
specific set of syntax rules.
....Roy