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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] domain names distinct from knowledge names (was: XLink a special case in
 [John Cowan:] > Then work hard on getting the FPI registration process repaired, > so that there is a stable alternative. Why that particular name registry? Why can't there be lots of name registries, for all kinds of names, offering all kinds of name registration services? A namespace really ought to be managed by the stakeholders in that namespace, and not by some gigantic faceless internet bureaucracy that collects internet domain-namespace taxes. I don't see where it's desirable for a network name addressing/resolution service to be the underlying name service for all namespaces. In fact, I'll go so far as to say it's a bad idea. We all really need the internet address-resolution namespace to fulfill a completely different purpose, namely network addressing. The network's addressing resolution namespace gets chewed up for reasons that have nothing to do with the resolution of addresses. Specific knowledge-names become high-value investments, and the owner of a domain name can in many ways own the corresponding vocabularies that have already been used in high-value documents. This doesn't sound a design for improving the quality of human communication. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds like it's trying to be a tool for concentrating power over human expression, with the ultimate concentration of power being those who control the internet domain namespace -- making Internic and its ilk sort of like a commodity marts, where the valuable commodities are the vocabularies that people have already implemented in their systems and used in their information assets. The vocabularies we use to communicate all kinds of information with each other should not be tied to internet addresses. The internet is one thing, and the words we use to communicate meaningfully with each other is a completely different thing. The only reason to assume that we must all use domain-name-centric vocabularies is because the W3C Recommends it. The Namespace Recommendation repurposes some of the necessary infrastructure of the internet itself in such a way as to promote the idea that the registry of domain names is (or should become) somehow indispensable for the management of human knowledge-names. (I suppose that if I believed that the internet is actually at the center of the universe of all universes, I might be fooled into believing this bizarre notion.) It seems to me that the knowledge-name registry industry (as distinct from the internet domain-name registry industry) would offer better services to the public if there were more serious mass-market-level competitors in that industry. I just don't believe that the internet's telephone book of paying customers will expand in its functions so prodigiously that it will be needed or used in every semantic operation. There is no reason why it should, and there is every reason to believe that the domain namespace will be irrelevant to most semantic operations, even if the W3C insists that it must be be relevant by Recommending that the identity of every vocabulary be expressed as an internet URI. In fact, for really powerful content management, it's essential to keep addressing distinct from semantics. URIs are addresses. It's a bad idea to force a URI into the role of being the one true identity an idea or set of ideas, if only because ideas last a lot longer than system addresses do. I'd sure hate to lose track of ideas at the same rate that internet domain names change hands. (Growing older is bad enough as it is!) There are quite a few namespace services that can be usefully offered, some of them quite specialized, and many having nothing to do with internet-style networking. Why does there need to be *any* sort of central naming authority for knowledge-names, as distinct from internet-addressing-names? And why should the current owner of an internet domain name have *any* special privileges on account of how other people have chosen to express and manipulate their knowledge? -Steve -- Steven R. Newcomb, President, TechnoTeacher, Inc. srn@t... http://www.techno.com ftp.techno.com NEW ADDRESS effective May 1, 2000: voice: +1 972 359 8160 fax +1 972 359 0270 405 Flagler Court Allen Texas 75013-2821 USA *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ *************************************************************************** 
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