Talk:Extensible Resource Identifier

“URIs … are the most successful identifiers in history.”

The identifiers “Rome” and “Athens,” and the whole “given name + family name” system of (human) identifiers have been pretty successful historically too. Maybe this article should say “URIs … are the most successful identifiers in network computing history” or something like that. Actually I think the statement is pretty dubious — who’s to say that URIs are more successful than the domain name system, or IPv4 addresses? —Fleminra 19:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Watch neutrality

I didn't see anything too blatant, but the overall tone seems to be more pro-XRI than neutral. Ojcit 00:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely, how about a counter-point from the W3C's perspective on XRIs?

copied text from OASIS

The following text appears on the oasis xri website. Is there some public domain disclaimer that I don't know about?

== Why not just use HTTP URLs? ==

This is one of the most frequently asked questions about XRIs (after all, HTTP URLs are the most successful identifiers of all time.)

First, the current working draft of the XRI Resolution specification includes a defined HTTP URL format in which any XRI can be expressed. So in essence, XRIs can be treated entirely as HTTP URIs for the purpose of backwards compatibility with HTTP infrastructure.

From a broader perspective, however, the reason HTTP URI syntax itself was not used is that it does not fulfill several of the most important requirements for abstract, cross-context identifiers. Specifically:

• HTTP URIs are bound to a specific transport protocol. A fully abstract identifier scheme needs to be independent of any specific transport or access protocol.
• HTTP URIs do not support sharing structured, “tagged” identifiers across contexts. A fully abstract identifier scheme will enable “identifier markup” just like XML enables data markup.
• HTTP URIs do not define a clear way to get at metadata (as opposed to data) about a resource. A fully abstract identifier scheme can cleanly distinguish access to resource metadata vs. a resource itself.
• HTTP URIs offer only a very limited authority delegation model. Abstract identifiers need to be able to express logical authorities and authority delegation relationships.
• HTTP URIs do not offer a trusted resolution mechanism. A fully abstract identifier scheme can define a trusted resolution protocol independent of DNS.
• HTTP URIs do not offer a standard syntax for persistence. A fully abstract identifier scheme can clearly distinguish between persistent and reassignable identifiers.

Licensing

I changed the licensing section as it is pretty misleading. I am an OASIS voting rep, the fact is that XRI is a proprietary technology and the xri.org kabuki dance fools nobody. The directors of this organization are not independent and even if they were the licensing terms currently on offer would not meet anyone's definition of an open standard. They do not meet the generally understood requirements for RAND, let alone free! The statement about offering RAND terms before the work is made final is also a red herring since nobody seriously expects the group to ever finish, if they did the OASIS membership would get the opportunity to vote the documents down. -- 66.31.39.76 17:50, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Response to Above

If someone is going to identity themselves as an OASIS voting rep and then make the claims that they do in the statements above without revealing their identity so that the membership of the XRI Technical Committee, the directors of XDI.org, or OASIS staff may contact them and discuss their issues, I think that speaks to their credibility.

I am the co-chair of the XRI TC along with Gabe Wachob, formerly of Visa International and now with AmSoft Systems. I volunteer as the secretary of XDI.org. The chairman of XDI.org, Bill Washburn, is also the Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation. I am a named inventor on the patents. Anyone at Wikipedia can contact me via my email address listed on the home page of the XRI TC, or via my public contact page.

The above statements are simply false, as are statements currently in the licensing section of the page we are discussing (I am about to correct them after I finish writing this). XDI.org has an exclusive license to the underlying patents. XDI.org contributed this license to OASIS as fully documented on the XRI TC IPR page. The XRI TC, chartered in January 2003, has always from its charter been in royalty-free IPR mode -- even before OASIS had such a mode officially. Once OASIS adopted its current IPR policies, the XRI TC adopted the royalty-free IPR mode (the leaders of the TC actually pushed hard for the royalty-free IPR mode to be even broader and more open-source friendly than it started).

Most concerning are: a) the reference to "the statement about offering RAND terms before the work is made final" (the XRI TC has never, ever operated under anything but royalty-free terms), and b) the reference to "nobody expects the group to ever finish" (the XRI TC has published 5 specifications and has just spent over 18 months on XRI Resolution 2.0, significant portions of which are now used by OpenID 2.0.)

Whenever IPR is involved, it is easy to use scare tactics. What's hard is to take IPR and dedicate it to supporting real open standards and services that use those standards. The directors of XDI.org and the members of the OASIS XDI TC have been doing that work for over four years now, and we urge any Wikipedia editor to review the facts and contact us if you have any questions whatsoever.

--DrummondReed 18:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC) Drummond Reed's public contact page

You should not be editing a page when you have a fiancial interest in it

Drummond, before you edit your own page again: it is your personal behavior under discussion here so why do you think that you can make an NPOV edit?

No sorry, your 'IPR grant' does not say what you imply it does. It is a statement that it is your intent to release the IPR. It is not actually a release. And the consistent failure to provide the promised release is the reason my company voted against making XRI an OASIS standard. The current IPR terms allows you and your backers to maintain control of the registry portion of XRI which is where the money is to be made anyway (if there is money to be made at all).

And you edited out the rather pertinent fact that the non-profit gave your company back an exclusive license to the technology. You really should not be touching this. -- 98.216.70.110 (talk) 16:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)