URN BIS Working Group Minutes 2014-07-25 1150-1320 Chair: Andrew Newton Minute taker: Dorothy Stanley, Aruba Networks Agenda: IETF 90 URNBIS Agenda Chair: Andrew Newton 1. Agenda Bashing 2. WG Status 3. How do query and fragment components relate to URNs? Sean Leonard (Penango, Inc) 4. draft-ietf-urnbis-urns-are-not-uris - John Klensin 5. Any Other Business The chair opened the meeting, bringing to the attention of all participants the NOTE WELL. He then showed the agenda, noting a slight change from the published version, and asked if there were any requested changes. None were offered. The chair then reviewed the status of the working group. He noted that the working group was stalled, and the current debate centered around moving URNs out of the URI definition. Sean Leonard presented his draft, draft-seantek-certspec (see slides). There was then a discussion around query components. Keith Moore stated that he thought queries would be useful in URNs, and that he believed their use was in scope for the original intent of URNs. Joe Hildebrand noted that his use of URNs in software and protocols is where he does not expect them to be parsed. The chair then asked Joe if URIs could be used in places where he uses URNs, and he said yes but the use of URNs in these situations is so they won’t be parsed. The chair then asked how equivalence is accomplished if the software doesn’t parse URNs. Sean discussed his thoughts on fragments, and the group discussed fragments as they relate to semantics. Leslie Daigle noted that the original URN working group made no progress when discussing semantics and only achieved their goals after focusing only on the specification. Larry Masinter then asked the chair about the scope of the work, and specifically asked if discussing the original intent of the original URN working group was part of it. The chair gave his personal opinion that the output of the working group should be break as few things as possible regardless of original intent. The group then discussed how URNs are used, with Joe noting that a lot of software using URNs do not parse them. The chair asked if XML namespace-aware parsers are a good example, and Joe agreed. The group discussed how the comparisons worked in those cases. There was then a discussion of queries and fragments being scheme dependent. Keith Moore stated that he believed it would be a bad idea to make queries and fragments scheme dependent. John Klensin presented his draft, draft-ietf-urnbis-urns-are-not-uris, next. However, he did not present the slides that had been previously distributed. He noted that the previous discussion and discussions he had had on the mailing list and with individuals recently illustrate how his draft came about . He noted that the group could have endless discussions about the nature of URNs, conformance with RFC 3986 and a myriad of other things. He speculated that there are two categories of URI parsers, ones that look at the scheme separated by the colon and process specifically on the scheme, and ones that try to process components of a URI. He noted that nothing the group can do with URNs will impact the first type, but that the second type might be impacted in a limited way. Joe Hildebrand proposed a thought experiment to move the discussion forward where the group could discuss a new URI scheme, how to use strings within that scheme, and to avoid using the # mark. Leslie Daigle stated that she didn’t “hate” that idea. Larry thought the group would quickly devolve into the philosophy of names vs locators and other issues such as permanence vs resolution, disputes, etc.. Leslie stated that would leave the possibility for differing opinions on URN definitions. Keith agreed with Leslie and Joe. The chair then focused the discussion on the differing opinions of fragments. Larry noted that fragment identifiers are for URLs and the specifications don’t match how they are used, and one such issue with them are for equivalence. John stated that the group had spent 2 years discussing fragments and their meaning and should instead focus on the necessity of strings starting with a # sign and the syntax for them. Keith argued that fragments are a mess and should not be extended to URNs. Sean also stated he believed fragments should stay out of URNs. Dave Thaler then turned the discussion back to Joe’s proposal. He noted that it would cause issues with APIs and name spaces. Joe stated that the intent of his proposal is to provide “legal URIs” that do not need to be heavily parsed. Ted Hardie offered a compromise suggesting that the group not start with the assumption that both are URIs stating that some needs might be met with legal URIs and others not. Joe stated that another requirement he envisioned was a reasonable amount of uniqueness. Larry then began a discussion of the needs of the library community, noting that they were not participating in this discussion. John stated that he believes that community thinks it is knowledgeable about URNs and need queries and fragments, noting that three years ago they wanted to standardize queries and fragments in URNs outside of the IETF. Larry pointed out that a subset of that community went to OASIS to standardize XRIs for their needs. The chair then asked if this was a similar to approach to Joe’s, upon which Joe said he believed it to be so. The chair then asked if the library community would be opposed to a new scheme. John stated he believed they want a parsable identifier, not a pure identifier. Joe stated that his solution is about pure identifiers rather than parsable identifiers. Julian Reschke then asked the group to bring the discussions back to the question of URNs being part of URIs and being a URI scheme. He asked for examples of identifiers that can’t fit in a URI. Ted noted if a design constraint is to conform to URIs, that might be taking some options off the table. John stated that URN conformance to URI syntax was not a problem but that the disagreements are over semantics. Julian disagreed. Keith stated that he was not happy with RFC 3986, and noted his desire to have a document that did little more than URI scheme registration. The group then discussed compatibility issues of URNs and URIs. The chair noted his own experience with an IPv6 study that found various URI libraries did not handle IPv6 addresses well. Julian stated that if URNs are separated from URIs, then URNs could no longer be used in all the places that specify URIs generally. John suggested the group start with the same syntax but use different semantics. Larry called for a BCP on how to read RFC 3986 and RFC 2141. John stated that was not part of the groups charter. The group then discussed moving forward with looking at URN syntax while trying to keep compatibility with URI syntax. The chair and Barry Leiba, the group’s Area Advisor, then discussed using John’s draft as a tool for guiding the contents of the 2141bis document, stating that John’s document may be published as an RFC or it may not. There were no objections from the group on moving forward in this manner. The chair then thanked all participants and closed the meeting at 13:25.