# URI Revised charter proposal

Leslie Daigle (leslie@bunyip.com)
Wed, 5 Jul 1995 20:52:50 -0400

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    From: Leslie Daigle <leslie@bunyip.com>

    Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 20:52:50 -0400

    Message-Id: <199507060052.UAA07873@beethoven.bunyip.com>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: URI Revised charter proposal

Following up on Larry's suggestion that I put my money where my mouth
is re. opinions on where the URI working group is going, I've attached
a revised proposal for the URI working group charter. As you will see,
I've started from Ron Daniel's proposed revision.

The most major departure that I have proposed is that the charter outlines
moving URL and URN documents to standards, and explicitly states that
other pieces of the URI puzzle (proposed: URC's and URA's; maybe URP's)
should be considered by the group and moved as informational or experimental
documents.

This proposal stems from the fact that these other pieces are clearly
important, and it is important to be discussing them at this point in
time as we grapple with the requirements/specs/implementation of URNs.
However, it is premature to be nailing down URC standards before we
have the primitives sorted out. Similarly, while I (obviously!) think
it's important to be discussing URAs and what they can contribute
to the URI arena, it is at the level of architecture and not implementation
that we have been presenting them to this group.

Thus, I would envision revising this working group's charter in a year
(when URNs and URLs are sorted out :-) to propose moving some of those
on to standards, and evaluate others as informational/experimental. Or,
by that time, they may have migrated to new working groups formed to deal
specifically with that part of the whole Internet puzzle.

So, specifically, from Ron Daniel's proposed URI-WG charter, I have dropped:

> Review URC proposals and select one to go forward as a proposed
> standard. Discussion should be largely complete by the spring
> '96 IETF, and a "last call" should be issued before the summer '96
> meeting.

This list of milestones may be considered overly-detailed in terms of URN
work -- but, then again, it is precisely the URN work that has been perceived
as most bogged and in need of redressing.

I have left date references as relational to IETF meetings because I believe
it provides an indicator of how many meetings are involved before the
milestone is meant to be dealt with (e.g., is "June 1996" before or
after the "summer '96" meeting?).

Cheers!
Leslie.

====================================================

The URI-WG is chartered to define a set of standards for the encoding of
system-independent resource identification, description, and location
information for the use of Internet information services.

The working group is expected to produce a set of documents that specify
standard representations of Uniform Resource Names (URNs) for resource
identification, and Uniform Resource Locations (URLs) for resource location.
This process will also entail the review of proposals for related
Uniform Resource Identifiers as they are suggested during the lifetime
of the working group. As appropriate, these will be discussed and revised
to the point of informational or experimental RFCs. Uniform Resource
Characteristics (URCs), Uniform Resource Agents (URAs), and Uniform Resource
Pseudonyms (URPs) are 3 classes of identifier that have been proposed as being
relevant to understanding the problem space of URIs and thus support the
process of bringing URL and URN standards to completion.

Such a set of standards and informational documents will provide a framework
that allows the Internet user to specify the location and access information
for information resources on the Internet, users and network-based tools to
uniquely identify specific resources on the Internet, and the creation and
operation of resource discovery and access systems for the Internet.

Goals and Milestones
====================

[Organized in roughly chronological order -- LLD]

Review and approve the revised charter before the Dallas IETF. [The
review of the charter was part of the original charter of the working
group; don't see why it can't be here for the purposes of our current
discussion. Also, although it is important to have discussion of a
revised charter before Stockholm, one week is not a reasonable amount
of time to expect to achieve "rough concensus" on the mailing list. -- LLD]
Review the Uniform Resource Agents draft, ca. the Stockholm meeting.
Recommend a course of action for that work before Dallas. If the
work receives approval of the WG, the draft should be revised in
time for Dallas, and the last call for an informational/experimental
RFC should be expected in time for the summer '96 IETF.

[Stockholm IETF happens here -- LLD]

Revise the URC Scenarios and Requirements draft. Issue "last call"
shortly after the Stockholm IETF. Recommend it for publication
as an informational RFC.
Review the competing URN proposals. Determine an evaluation process for
comparing the merits of each based on a) performance, and b) how well
they support the identified URN requirements and compile results of the
evalutation for discussion at the Dallas IETF.
Determine an interim URN syntax for the purposes of evaluating URN
proposals shortly after the Stockholm IETF.

[Dallas IETF -- LLD]

Select one URN proposal, or a combination of the desirable portions of
several, to go forward as a proposed standard. The first draft of the
unified scheme should be prepared in time for the spring '96 IETF.

Revise the URL document (RFC 1738) and move it to the next step on the
standards track, taking into account the comments of the IESG
at the time they went to Draft Standard.

Revise the drafts on specific URL schemes (mailserver, finger, Z39.50, ...)
and submit them as proposed standards.

[Spring '96 IETF -- LLD]

Develop a draft on how specific URL schemes are to be vetted once this
group has dissolved. Submit this as an Internet-Draft by spring '96
IETF. [The problem of who actually writes this is a working-group problem,
not a problem with the proposed charter, IMHO -- LLD]

[Summer '96 IETF -- LLD]

Revise the URL-vetting scheme document and promote its movement to
RFC by the summer '96 IETF.

Review URI landscape by summer '96 meeting to determine which elements
should be put forward for consideration as draft standards, and revise
charter as necessary.

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"Life is a Usability Test" Leslie Daigle
leslie@bunyip.com
-- ThinkingCat Montreal, Canada

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- Maybe reply: Erik Jul: "Re: URI Revised charter proposal"
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- Maybe reply: Chris Weider: "Re: URI Revised charter proposal"
- Maybe reply: Erik Jul: "Re: URI Revised charter proposal"