Message-ID: <535C13E0.5070701@jrn.me.uk>
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 21:15:28 +0100
From: Ross Nicoll <jrn@jrn.me.uk>
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To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
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Subject: [Bitcoin-development] BIP0071 media type registration with IANA
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Dear all,

Still going through the payment protocol specifications... the MIME
types in BIP0071 aren't IANA registered, and honestly look unlikely to
be accepted if they were submitted as-is.

Latest RFC on media type registration is RFC 6838, which very strictly
restricts what can go in the default "application/" namespace.
Essentially they'd want it to be an ISO standard or similar. There are
vendor namespaces, which look much more feasible (this is how Powerpoint
2007 ended up as
"application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation"),
but would be quite a dramatic change to BIP0071.

What's the general feeling on this? Personally I'm in favour of
following the registration process, so register a Bitcoin vendor
namespace with IANA, then allocate MIME types such as:

application/vnd.bitcoin.payment.request
application/vnd.bitcoin.payment.payment
application/vnd.bitcoin.payment.ack

Thoughts?

Ross