I like the idea in principle, but I would do it directly with the "technically astute" organizations and let them keep the modest revenue. More precisely, I think managing something that is deemed a critical resource should be done in an organization that has professional staff to do it if possible GBIF seems the most broadly connected to TDWG. That's where I would do it. In fact, aren't they already managing some TDWG services?
Bob
On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Dave Vieglais vieglais@ku.edu wrote:
I'm not sure if anyone has suggested this strategy (I'll be surprised if not):
TDWG seems determined to use LSIDs for GUIDs, yet the technical issues for implementation are discouraging enough for some to defer deployment. Perhaps TDWG could offer as a bonus for membership (or perhaps a small additional charge) the provision of some elements of the LSID infrastructure stack, overloading the tdwg.org domain?
Then, instead of having each institution create DNS entries such as "mydepartment.institution.org" and deal with the SRV details, use TDWG as a kind of registrar and do something like "mycollectionid.tdwg.org". TDWG would then be responsible for the appropriate DNS SRV registration, and could even operate a resolver and/or redirection service for that domain.
The income would not be very much (say $10/year per org * 100 participants = $1k), but it should be a lot less expensive for the entire community than the total cost for each organization operating their own infrastructure (perhaps $10/year DNS + $1000/year operations
- 100 participants = $101k).
So as not to overload the TDWG infrastructure, it would be sensible to encourage technically astute groups (e.g. GBIF, EoL, NCEAS) to contribute computing cycles and fallback DNS services to ensure reliability of the entire system.
The end result could be a reliable, distributed infrastructure for LSID (or whatever GUID scheme is decided upon) resolution that conforms to the requirements / specifications derived from the TDWG procedures at a small cost for participation. The low cost and deferral of technical overhead to a knowledgeable group would hopefully encourage participation by a broader audience in this piece of fundamental architecture.
(It may also help reduce the endless cycles of discussion about GUIDs and LSIDs)
Dave V. _______________________________________________ tdwg-tag mailing list tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag