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Comment by GFK_of_xmaspast | Hacker News Reader

Works ok for java?

And OS X/iOS app identifiers, etc.

Yes, it works ok. But there are plenty of schemes that both work and are sane.

How is TLD namespacing not sane? If you own the domain you own the package(s) in that namespace. It's pretty easy and fairly trustworthy to identify a TLD. When Stickman Co comes along, there's not a fight about the package name and the original package maintainer doesn't get elbowed out of the way.

I'm pretty sure domains have been transferred to their "rightful owner" even more than NPM package names have.

I think TLD is ok, but I like Go's namespacing even better. It uses repos, so you can use both private and public repos. And it's actually where the code "live".

Git repos change way more often than domain or company names do. Moving from code.google.com to github.com, moving a project from a user to an org, transferring across orgs, renaming an org. All of these things have happened to me in a single Golang project. Ironically, the code.google.com -> github move was actually Golang stdlib code itself.

Domain names are transient. They come and go, changing owners throughout their lifetime. Code, on the other hand, lives on.

If you want namespacing to be tied to Internet domains then I want the right to take over your code after you forget to renew your domain.

I've always found it to be a pretty sane scheme. What problems do you have with it?

Coupling it to a TLD is arbitrary. Does Sandra own sandra.com? What if she doesn't have a website at all? It's kind of a silly convention.

You can get a free domain name without a lot of trouble.

no you can't.

at most you can borrow one.

This is uncommon, but in this case you can use your email address or github.io, etc.

It's more common than not to not have a domain. Most programmers I know don't have a personal domain they own, and not all code is written for work (most open-source code isn't, in particular).

So put your open-source code on github and use something like <githubUserName>.github.io. And if it's for work you use your work groupId. If it's personal but not public, who cares what groupId you use? Just pick something.

What's the problem?

And when you move your code off github or change your username, are you supposed to change the package name too?

If not, or if we're going to put whatever we want in there anyway, then why hold to the idea it must correspond to a domain name anyway?

I have a bunch of domains, but none of them feel appropriate to use for this. So I might get one just do that I can have a proper package name. Now I have to keep that domain forever. I don't see how this is any different than namespacing by my home address.

It feels to me like it's tying your code to something ephemeral. If you're going to do that you may as well make it something uniquely ephemeral. Github, Docker Hub, Packagist et al use usernames for this, it works nicely, packages are namespaced in the form username/packagename.

People advocating using a domain as the namespace get the same result, but the package namespace is tied to a domain, you have to have control of that domain, if you lose it, do you lose the namespace?

What if I don't own any domain, people are saying in that instance I should use io.github.myusername, why not just myusername? that way my code isn't tied to a platform I may not use in 5 years time.

I suppose that's it, a namespace is about my code, not about where the code is maintained or an external resource I may or may not keep access to, so don't namespace it in a way that ties it to such.

NO!

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