Last Call Review of draft-higgs-hbbtv-urn-00
review-higgs-hbbtv-urn-00-opsdir-lc-woolf-2015-01-06-00

Hello,

I have reviewed this document as part of the Operational directorate's ongoing
effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the IESG. These comments
were written primarily for the benefit of the operational area directors.

Document editors and WG chairs should treat these comments just like any other
last call comments.

Assessment: this looks ready to go, with one suggestion, below.

The text, and the datatracker history, suggest this is a straightforward
registration of what's largely a proprietary namespace, in support of
interoperability among HBBTV participants and the larger internet. From a quick
reading of RFC 3406, I think this looks completely consistent with the purpose
of the registry.

From an ops perspective, imagining I might see an hbbtv URN in the wild, I
think the draft answers the key questions I'd have, namely whether this URN
space is published and reserved, format rules, and where to go for more
information about how to validate or use such URNs.

The only gap I can see against the RFC 3406 criteria is in the "Community
Considerations" section, which RFC 3406 suggests should describe whether the
registry is open or closed. The document is clear that the HBBTV Association is
the registration authority, but doesn't say whether only HBBTV members can
participate in developing/publishing specifications that define entries in this
registry, or there's a process for non-members to do so, i.e. that these URNs
could be legitimately in use outside of the HBBTV Association's specifications.
It's implied elsewhere that these URNs will be included only in specifications
developed within the HBBTV association, but as a possibly-curious operator of
internet services, I'd appreciate a sentence or two more about how open the
process might be.

The requested registry entry just seems to be the open documentation that this
namespace exists and where to go to find out more about how particular URNs in
it might be used. This promotes interoperability and should make operators'
lives slightly easier for being available.

thanks,
Suzanne