Re: Merging RRP and Whois

[Edward Lewis <lewis@tislabs.com>]

At 11:32 AM -0500 1/23/01, George Belotsky wrote:
>It is not by accident that most of the great achievements in modern
>times involved the discovery of some unifying principle.  The process
>of unification allows more general constructs to emerge, and these
>constructs ultimately prove more practically useful than a fragmented
>view.

OTOH, there have been fatal cases of mission creep.  The OSI Session
Protocol comes to mind.  Also, in the defense industry, adding capability
(night flying) sometimes incurs costs (extra weight) that thwart the
original design (maneuverability/mobility).

I don't doubt that unity is a good thing, but deadlines are real
constraints that need to be factored into engineering decisions.

>In many cases, however, a little thought can safely accomodate a
>deadline.  The RRP-Whois unification is one such case.  Already, the
>RRP is being designed to be an extensible protocol.  Given that the
>Whois deadline is still far away, all that would be needed from the
>RRP group is to recognize that there will be one protocol, and leave
>enough hooks so that the Whois part can eventually be built.

I think this is already addressed in the proposed charter:

# The initial specification will allow multiple registrars to register and
# maintain domain names within multiple Top Level Domains (TLDs).  Subsequent
# versions of the specification will extend the protocol to exchange other
# information needed to organize the Internet, such as IP address allocations.
# The specification should be flexible enough to support the different
# operational models of registries.  The specification should allow extension
# to support other registration data, such as address allocation and contact
# information.

(Eagle-eyed observers may notice a new sentence in there: "Subsequent
versions..."  This was added to an update sent to Patrik this morning - in
case questions of what was meant by "initial specification.")

Note that the charter does not mention Whois by name - there has been no
discussion up to now about a merging of Whois and RRP.

Is there a copy of the Whois charter available?

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Edward Lewis                                                NAI Labs
Phone: +1 443-259-2352                      Email: lewis@tislabs.com

Dilbert is an optimist.

Opinions expressed are property of my evil twin, not my employer.