URNs, Namespaces and Registries

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. URNs, Namespaces and Registries
I read that OpenID 2.0 is moving toward extensible resource identifiers (XRIs), a development that is, well, unclear to me. Danny Ayers recommended this article, which has been kicking around the W3C editorial process since 2001, as a case study of XRI. The first paragraph is very encouraging, and encasulates my objection to CORDRA in a nutshell: "This finding addresses the questions 'When should URNs or URIs with novel URI schemes be used to name information resources for the Web?' and 'Should registries be provided for such identifiers?'. The answers given are 'Rarely if ever' and 'Probably not'." More...