# Re: news: and nntp: URLs

Alan Emtage (bajan@bunyip.com)
Thu, 25 Nov 1993 12:40:12 -0500

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    Message-Id: <9311251740.AA09480@mocha.bunyip.com>

    From: bajan@bunyip.com (Alan Emtage)

    Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1993 12:40:12 -0500

    In-Reply-To: Tim Berners-Lee's message as of Nov 25, 12:09

    To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch, mitra@path.net (Mitra)

    Subject: Re: news: and nntp: URLs

[Tim Berners-Lee writes:]
> We (the URI WG) are not inventing things with the URL stuff.
> We are documenting existing practice. The inventions go into the new
> schemes, not the old.

Actually Tim, this is not in fact the case. While the current URL draft
is heavily influenced by, and draws on the experience of the WWW
community, the concept of the URL predates the existence of either WWW or
the working group. As such, it is the duty and responsibility of the WG
on the Standards Track to modify existing practice and previous work with
a long-term view.

The common example here is of Sun's NFS. It is my understanding that Sun
wanted to make NFS into an Internet Standard. As a result, Sun had to
cede control over the protocol to the IETF (which it agreed to ): if the
IETF as a whole cannot modify the work that it itself has deemed as
"standards" then who can? This was (is) one of the major political
problems with the OSI protocol stack. Who would have control? The OSI or
the IETF?

There are mechanisms for documenting existing practice in the form of
Informational RFCs. However the UR* work is all Standards Track and as
such the working group is tasked not merely with examining existing
practice but to formulate solutions to the problems as it sees fit. Due
consideration must of course be given to the installed base, however this
is not and cannot be the overriding concern of the group. We will
probably be living with the decisions we make now for a long time to
come. We have a duty to do the best job we can given our current
understanding of the issues.

    --
    -Alan

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    Alan Emtage,				"The Left in Canada is more gauche
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