[tdwg-tag] SourceForge LSID project websites broken - role for TDWG?

[Hilmar Lapp]

On Apr 3, 2009, at 1:23 PM, Peter DeVries wrote:

> [...]
> 3) LSIDs increase the implementation costs significantly beyond the  
> costs required for domain registration and a web server.

I think you'll find plenty of people who will argue that the cost of  
minting persistent GUIDs is much higher than the cost of a web server  
and domain registration in any event, and that it might be a Good  
Thing(tm) if an identifier system doesn't pretend otherwise.

> [...] 4) Tim Berners-Lee feels that LSIDs are unnecessary, and  
> after spending several years looking at this issue I think he is  
> right. Even if TBL is wrong, you have positioned yourself for an  
> uphill battle for adoption.

He has been wrong before. More to the point, I don't think this has  
to matter. In 1998 he would have probably said that DOIs are  
unnecessary. They may indeed be, from a technological standpoint, but  
from a social and business (sustainability) standpoint they've  
clearly been hugely successful. So I think the question that matters  
much more is, is there (or will there be) a similar ecosystem and  
environment for LSIDs that will make them equally useful. That's what  
I'm less sure about.

Also, I think we ought not to confuse one use-case for GUIDs (such as  
linked data) with the requirements for an identifier system for  
biodiversity.

	-hilmar

BTW if anyone feels this is a long discussion that has been had  
before, check out the thread that begins with "registering info:  
uris" on the Code4Lib list (http://www.mail-archive.com/code4lib% 
40listserv.nd.edu/) It turns out they struggle with similar questions  
(and also not for the first time), except in a library context, which  
might be much closer to a museum context than a semweb research  
community.

-- 
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:- hlapp at duke dot edu :
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