Re: The politics and other realities of names.... Ray Blaak 31 Jan 2006 18:08 UTC

>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.