This discussion on naming seems to revolve around the Distinguished
Name (DN) being taken as a name. Of course it is no such thing.
The DN is an address for delivery of electronic mail and serves no
other purpose.
No! The DN has many other uses than simply the delivery of electronic mail.
It might be used, indirectly, to look up your O/R Address or RFC 822 mail
address, but it can also be the key into a database of other information you
wish to make accessible.
IMHO The telephone book serves no purpose other than identifying
people and supplying their phone number. -- Now some may argue that
the phone book can be used to find an address, but that is only true
if most of the address is already known. Other stats may be gleaned
from the analysis of phone numbers and (for example) wealth of a
neighborhood. But does that give the phone book some other purpose
-- perhaps, but these are not intentional. In the absence of email,
the DN could not exist. (again IMHO) So perhaps my statement was
too strong -- but I don't think so!
Also please note that there is a difference between an address and
routing information, at least in the snailmail world. The thing that
many of you describe as an address is in reality a set of routing
instructions which I would hope will fade away as email becomes more
common. Then perhaps it will be more apparent that the DN corresponds
most closely to an address rather than a name.
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* as an aside to the thought police *
* How did I get on the disty list for this board?? *
* Is there some way to send email to pem-dev without getting on list?*
* I have other sources for reading contributions to pem-dev *
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Peace
Tom Jones - Lemcom