[OpenID] Proposal: SMTP service extension for Yadis discovery

Joaquin Miller joaquin at netmesh.us
Fri Feb 9 22:37:52 UTC 2007


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>... although this may be an interesting idea, 
>Yadis (unlike SMTP) isn't meant for host-global 
>communications. A Yadis document normally corresponds to a single user record.

I feel that is a misunderstanding of the intent and the specification of Yadis.

1 Scope

This Yadis Specification provides:
• A general purpose identifier for a person and 
any other entity, which can be used with
a variety of services.
• A syntax for a resource description document 
identifying services available using that
identifier and an interpretation of the elements of that document.
• A protocol for obtaining that resource 
description document, given that identifier.
-- http://yadis.org/papers/yadis-v1.0.pdf

It seems clear from the spec that: If 
http://example.com is an identifier for an entity 
(for example, a party operating a web host), then 
Yadis provides for using a Yadis document to 
describe the services available using that identifier.

And, surely http://example.com can be used by 
example as an identifier for itself.  (And, by 
the way, example can operate a web server at 
example.com, that web server can provide 
services, those services can be described in 
a  document that looks exactly like a Yadis 
document, and that web server can serve that 
document according to the Yadis protocol. Any 
such document will actually   be a Yadis document.)

Cordially, Joaquin

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