Subject: URN NID assignment -- policy

From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 21:58:33 -0400

As it stands today, the only document/policy that governs URN namespace
ID (NID) assignment is RFC2611.

To paraphrase it, anyone can use URN NID's that are "x-<whatever>",
anyone willing to ship in a particular request template to IANA
can get Informal "IANA-<dddddd>"-style NIDs assigned, and entities
that publish an RFC (of any category) can request and have
a Formal NID of a chosen set of characters/strings assigned.

I _really_don't_ want us to go down the rathole of discussion that
we had prior to publishing RFC2611, so I'm not going to re-summarize
the different issues that were thought of then.

Given the specific namespace proposals that have come in, and the
fact that there has been discussion about whether they were what
we really hoped would happen, there is room to reflect as a group
as to whether we still think the open policy of RFC2611 is the best
plan to stick with, or whether there are additional objectively
measurable criteria that can be applied in the assessment of
applications for Formal NIDs.

Either way -- we (the URN WG) will probably have to provide input
to the IESG, which may have its own take on things.

To refresh your memories, recent namespace proposals have included:

        . PIN -- put forward by Michael Mealling in May
          (originally draft-mealling-pin-urn-00.txt, but the
          author said he had revisions to incorporate from the
          discussion)

        . OID -- put forward by Michael Mealling in May, soon
          to be updated in draft-mealling-oid-urn-01.txt (also
          waiting in the I-D queue)

        . ndw -- put forward by Norman Walsh, to appear as
          draft-nwalsh-urn-ndw-00.txt or -01.txt, depending on
          how the I-D editor handles a small glitch in the process,
          waiting in the I-D queue, but I'll forward an unofficial
          copy in a moment.

So, the wider question is not where does policy happen -- it's "is
there policy that needs to happen here, or do we take a stand and
say there isn't?".

Leslie.

--

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"My body obeys Aristotelian laws of physics."
   -- ThinkingCat

Leslie Daigle
[email-masked]
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