> Although I share Robert's concerns about how this spec became a Proposed > Standard, I really have trouble to see the issue here. As a matter of > fact, I'm using a purl.org URL in one of my (non-Atom related) drafts as > well. > > What we're talking about here is not change control over the namespace > or the namespace name! It's about what happens if an HTTP client > dereferences that URL, which is irrelevant for the purpose of XML > namespaces. My (and I assume also James') assumption is that once the > specification is out, the purl.org HTTP URL will be reconfigured so that > it redirects to a URL identifying the actual RFC (preferably to readable > HTML :-). > > All of this is only necessary because the IETF insists in not minting > HTTP URLs themselves. I think the argument is that they can become > unstable. Of course that depends on the organization minting them and > maintaining the servers, not the actual type of URI... (note that even > the BCP for usage of XML in IETF specs -- RFC3470 -- mentions that it > would be good if the IETF would allow URLs from www.ietf.org for this > purpose). >
Just a thought like that but wouldn't it make sense for RFC 4287 to have specified that every standardised extension should follow the same namespace as RFC 4287? For instance RFC 4287 uses http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom Extensions should then be something like: http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom-FTE It's just a rough idea. - Sylvain
