1. Summary
Draft name: "WebFinger" draft-ietf-appsawg-webfinger-10.txt
Salvatore Loreto is the document shepherd.
Barry Leiba is the responsible Area Director.
Draft Abstract:
"This specification defines the WebFinger protocol, which can be
used to discover information about people or other entities on
the Internet using standard HTTP methods. WebFinger discovers
information for a URI that might not be usable as a locator
otherwise, such as account or email URIs."
2. Review and Consensus
The "WebFinger" draft has been discussed extensively within the
APPSAwg during the last year, it become a wg item in August 2012.
Actually at some point the mail traffic generated by the
discussion was so high that it was agreed to move the discussion
to a dedicated mailing list (webfinger@ietf.org).
The only significant point difficult to agree on has been about
"whether WebFinger MUST support HTTPS only or instead it should
be allowed for WebFinger fallback from HTTPS to HTTP". That was
resolved with a consensus call that generated a strong rough
consensus for HTTPS only.
The draft has been also extensively reviewed during the APPSAwg
Last Call. A lot of editorial issues, text clarifications have
been raised; all of them are now addressed in the current version
of the draft. During the wglc process it has been also agreed to
define a new media type for WebFinger.
There are several open source WebFinger implementations already
updated to the last version of the draft, a not exhaustive list
of them can be found here:
http://www.packetizer.com/webfinger/software.html
3. Intellectual Property
All the authors have confirmed conformance with BCPs 78 and 79,
and there are no related IPR declarations.
4. Other Points
The draft has normative references to two Informational documents:
- RFC 4627, "The application/json Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation"
- RFC 2818, "HTTP over TLS"
Both appear in the DOWNREF registry.
There is an Unused reference: [15] Klyne, G., Newman, C., "Date
and Time on the Internet: Timestamps", RFC 3339, July 2002.
There is no new IANA registry created by this document.