Re: [Treebase-devel] treebase.domain.name

[Ryan S. <rsc...@ne...>]

On Jan 13, 2010, at 4:52 PM, Vladimir Gapeyev wrote:
> At the moment, I have trouble seeing why TB should in any way depend on a third-party URL redirection service.  The only valid reasons for PURLs that I see mentioned at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PURL apply to poor people without their own domains.

From a technical perspective, this is correct. As long as the organization has a commitment to maintain permanent URLs, any old domain name will do.

But domain names can and do change. We have no idea whether treebase.org will still exist in 50 years. A few fun scenarios:
* Treebase merges with Dryad (tryad.org)
* Treebase is bought out by Google (phylogenetics.google.com)
* Treebase takes over all repositories in the world (the-one-uber-repository.com)

There are many possible situations in which it would not make sense to continue use of the treebase.org domain. Using a more neutral third party (purl.org) is one way to manage the changes. 

--- Ryan