Re: The politics and other realities of names....

[Ray Blaak <blaak@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Rather than establish our own authority we could try to leverage an
> existing one, as Java does.  com.microsoft.foo.bar is reserved for the
> owner of the microsoft.com DNS name.  This may not be the most
> suitable level of entity for an authorization system.  The example
> above could either refer to the foo.bar module of microsoft.com, or
> the bar module of foo.microsoft.com, which for Microsoft Corporation
> may not be such a problem, but for other hosts that conflict may be
> unacceptable.  The naming is also not actually enforced by any of the
> Java tools - nothing is stopping me from distributing my own
> com.microsoft modules.
>  
These are valid criticisms, but in practice they are not a problem. The 
domain-based naming system has the big advantage of being simple and 
good enough. It works well enough it practice.

> Now consider that, unlike Java, we actually write reusable code, and
> share modules with third parties.  So Acme.com may import Bob's List
> Library. 
But not over the net. You can't do that reliably in general or even 
usually, unless the library in question is from a stable well known 
place. "Versionitus" requires that testing needs to be done before you 
know your code works with the library.