# Re: Last Call: URL to Proposed and URN- and IRL-Reqs to Informational

Norbert Leser - OSF DCE: (nl@osf.org)
Thu, 22 Sep 1994 17:35:31 -0400

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    Message-Id: <199409222135.RAA11468@postman.osf.org>

    To: "Karen R. Sollins" <sollins@lcs.mit.edu>, uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Re: Last Call: URL to Proposed and URN- and IRL-Reqs to Informational

    In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 22 Sep 1994 11:56:18 EDT."

                 <199409221556.LAA00729@lysithea.lcs.mit.edu>

    Date: Thu, 22 Sep 1994 17:35:31 -0400

    From: "Norbert Leser - OSF DCE: (617)621-8715" <nl@osf.org>

Now, after seing a number of messages complaining about the XFN availability,
I want to give you some more info about it.

First of all, I want to make clear that neither I nor the members of the team
that was responsible for developing the XFN spec are directly associated with
X/Open. We have developed this specification in agreement with but externally
of X/Open. Thus, we cannot make the spec directly available to you, you must
request it from X/Open (contact info is below).

> Karen Sollins writes:
> I fail to find any full reference to "your" specification; can you provide
> a working URL for the documents?
> Further information on contacts, mailing lists, archives might be of interest
> as well.
>
>
> Yes, I asked the same question followed by one about why they hadn't
> bothered to join our group which is free and open to anyone who cares
> to join. There was no particular answer to the second other than
> something about that we should already have known about XFN. In
> response to the first Norbert reports that the XFN document is only
> available on paper from X/Open and only for a fee of $400 and is
> intentionally copyrighted to restrict duplication. It is not
> available on the net at all.

Don't know, where this $400 comes from - certainly not from me; anyway,
here's some order info [As I said before, I cannot speak for X/Open, but
assume that the fee just about covers the cost of the paper copy. -
Electronic versions are currently not available.]:

One can order it from any X/Open office.
The title is: X/Open Federated Naming (XFN) Specification
Order #: P 403
Prize (in US): $70

Office in Menlo Park, CA
phone: 415-323-7992

Office in Virginia
phone: 800-469-6736

The second part of the question? As I said in my previous mail, it's unfortunate
but a fact of life that it wasn't feasible for us to join any activity that
had some indication of interference before drafting the preliminary spec.
We would not have gotten far if we acted that way. I also pointed out before
that it's about the right time now and an opportunity for us to try to act
together (assuming a mutual interest).

> By the way, just for the record, X/Open isn't the only industry-based
> organization that believes it has a global naming scheme. I don't
> think we want at this point to get into a study of all of them to
> figure out which ones have partial solutions or answers to some of our
> issues.
> ...

I understand that one of the needed things to do is a discussion of what XFN
is all about. I'd perfectly be willing to help here out, if there's sufficient
interest. Just the 2 second version for now:

XFN is _not_ another "global naming scheme" as you said. XFN defines a set
of interfaces and protocols that permits to uniformly operate on and compose
multiple federated naming systems (including various global naming systems).
Or, to cite the spec:

A federated naming service is an aggregation of autonomous naming
systems that cooperate through a standard interface to implement
name resolution for composite names.

And what you further say that you do not want "to get into a study of all
of them" is exactly the point that I raised in my request to the IESG. If
there is only a limited set of naming schemes that can be supported by URNs,
than you must not make the claim of "the support of existing legacy naming
systems" in the requirements document.

> I fully agree with Paul Francis and all the others that we should be
> getting on with this process.

Agree. That's what I'm trying to do. As far as I understand the process, the
next step is the decision of whether the draft document should be published
as an RFC right now (Sorry, but that's what the IESGs "Last call" and request for
comments is all about).

Norbert

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- Reply: Roy T. Fielding: "Re: Last Call: URL to Proposed and URN- and IRL-Reqs to Informational"
- Reply: Owen Rees: "Re: Last Call: URL to Proposed and URN- and IRL-Reqs to Informational"