Re: [idn] host name vs. domain name

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Saturday, 18 March, 2000 23:51 -0800 Bill Manning
<bmanning@ISI.EDU> wrote:

> % Bill, I think it is up to the WG to determine what it
considers requirements.  For whatever one personal opinion is
worth, there is a meta-requirement that changes to the DNS (or
the way it is
> used)
> 
> 	 Huh?  I thought you were commenting as a wg participant?

Sorry if I somehow was not clear -- not quite sure how to
interpret your response above.  My personal opinion as a WG
participant is that there is a meta-requirement...   With
"personal opinion", I was trying to differentiate what I was
saying from what I might say as "technical advisor" to the WG or
as an IAB member -- those opinions might be different and, as
indicated in an earlier note to the list, I'm trying to mostly
watch and see where things go.

There do seem to be two quite different positions in the WG (and
in the IETF about internationalization issues more generally) on
the importance of the installed base.  To exaggerate both
somewhat, they might be described as:

     * Internationalization is so important, and the Internet
     has been all-ASCII long enough, that we need to move
     rapidly forward with the former.  If the consequence of
     that is to break all of the ASCII-only sites and
     applications, their crashing and burning will just give
     them extra incentive to update their software and systems
     to an international (or character-set-neutral) base.
     
     * The installed base must be preserved at all costs, and it
     simply isn't plausible or responsible to deploy a plan that
     will break any existing application, service, or host.

Now, again as a personal opinion (i.e., not in either of those
other two roles), I think the output of this WG will be more
credible if it addresses those positions and the tradeoffs (and
plausible middle positions) between them in a serious way.  If
it doesn't, I imagine that the IETF will have to figure out that
answer in another way, since I have trouble imagining our going
very far forward with standards-track protocol development that
requires or assumes either of those positions at its most
extreme.

    john