Standardizing on IDNA 2003 in the URL Standard

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:33 AM, John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com> wrote:
> It might be relevant because Anne seems to quite often argue
> that existing practice has to be preserved forever if that were
> what happened.

My main interest is indeed compatibility with deployed content and
what's also very relevant here is
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html I think. Phasing out domain
names goes very much counter to the notion of URL persistence.

The sentiment in this thread that we can keep changing the rules also
strikes me as bad. Going from IDNA2003 to UTS46 to just IDNA2008 to
maybe something else in the future. The whole reason we set standards
is stability. So you can build on top of a foundation you know will
not change. We take this pretty seriously in most places. Not taking
it seriously for something as fundamental as domain names strikes me
as wrong.

(There's a larger issue with ICANN just removing certain ccTLDs. If
the Netherlands ever stops being an independent entity would ".nl" and
the set of URLs related to "annevankesteren.nl" just disappear? This
happened to several other countries and it makes me sad.)


-- 
http://annevankesteren.nl/