Re: Merging RRP and Whois

  One of the problems that killed x.500 was its rigid fixed schema. There
  are multiple other reasons as well why x.500 died but won't go into it
  here. Another issue was the inability of the RIR's to come to some sort of 
  agreement on a commmon schema. These two things pushed RWhois to use flexible 
  schemas that had to be "discovered".

Hang on: you want to say X.500 died becasue its schema was too rigid, but
that RIRS have to come to an agreement on a common schema!?

Ok. so nobody wants to re-visit that swamp, but I do want to comment on one
thing: X.500 death reflected many things, including the realization there
was a considerable IPR value in the directory contents, for each owner of
that content: no company wanted that much exposed information just given
away, if available at all. 

Whois as used by RIR is not a _generalized_ directory: Its purposeful and
relates to information which is deemed to be in the public interest to maintain
(be it exposed or not). As an example its in the public interest for a
maintainer to have a record that lets them maintain routing records etc,
even if the password they use is not exposed, or if its a role-handle
and not a named person. Sure, its also in that ISPs interest, but that
doesn't 'collide' - its complementary.

So for me, a *narrow* purposeful distributed database, means a defined, tight
schema.

I think thats probably agreement btw.

-George