On 1/30/06, Richard Pyle deepreef@bishopmuseum.org wrote:

Rod Page wrote:

...

The issue of centralisation and "taxonomic freedom" is a red herring (due to Rich and I talking past each other -- my fault).

I share the blame.

...

My concern (and I know I'm doing a very poor job of explaining this) is that administrative layers and attempting to harmonise things centrally may ultimately prove to get in the way of getting things done.

I agree that it might, but I don't think it necessarily has to. Again, I point to IP addresses and DNS. They are obviously harmonized, but aren't locked up in administrative layers (or are they???)

Yes, they are, big time. Both have a hierarchy of organizational administrative control ending at IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, http://www.iana.org/. If an individual proposes to put a machine onto the internet, they receive permission, an IP address, and a dns name from the appropriate local authority managing the network to which they will physically connect. Often that permission and issuance is done by software on a network host on that network (usually a DHCP, dynamic host control protocol, server. In turn, the network administrators will have received permissions from the next administration up the chain to issue a specific block of IP addresses, or specific form of names.

IANA is under attack right now by a movement of governments led by the International Telecommunications Union which wants to centralize, by country, control of the mechanisms that are sketched above.

There is a lesson here though. It is that most end-user beneficiaries of this complex arrangement find it needs nothing whatsoever on their part to get those benefits. That is probably a requirement of any good GUID issuance and resolution services also. (But it is not about GUID capabilities, rather about their support).