Hi all,

What's the point of using a GUID? What situation is going to require
having one?

I've suggested in the past that there needs to be a way for a program
to uniquely identify an item. Note that I'm saying this is a means
for a program to do the identifying, not a person. As such this
hypothetical program would presumably be doing something FOR a person.

I'd like to see two reasons to use a GUID be taken into consideration.

One, allow a program that possess a GUID for an *item* to be able to
return to the item's source and request a "more complete" XML
represenation of the item. This would let programs using the RSS
find out more about an item. This would let the feed remain
reasonably compact. It'd also allow a site to deliver considerably
more complete data, but only when requested. This could save a fair
amount of CPU as many items probably won't ever get requested.

Two, allow a client program to 'carry along' some source information
as an item moves through site to site. Many item do have a source
and are simple echoed from one feed to another. Yes, some feeds do
add more information on top of an item. Yes, this could lead to
debates over what sort of provenance is suitable for attaching to an
item. Again, this'd be a great reason for an XML interface to remain
available for an item (via it's GUID).

This leads into several other areas for DOI and DRM. Both digital
object identifiers and digital rights management are of great
interest to many content providers. Sure, a lot of stuff is free and
doesn't really care about these concepts. However, that's no reason
not to have a discussion of the concepts or to allow the spec to
optionally accomodate them.

And as to "stop energy", this list was resurrected from the dead as a
counter to it. Let's all try to keep things moving forward this time.

-Bill Kearney