Comment by bradfitz
3 years ago
Here's the original email where I proposed .well-known:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/apps-discuss/1_a06NU8z...
> 1) I feel that /host-meta is too casual of a name and prone to collisions. It matches /^[\w\-]+$/, which I think is a subset of a fair number of sites' usernames."
...
> i.e. put something ugly and weird in there, like a semicolon, to minimize the chance that it interferes with people's existing URL structure.
And later, how the semi became the dot: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/apps-discuss/j6KWTSTVC...
Fun bit of history!
This proposal made complete sense and the counter argument was of such a tiring kind. I see that from time to time in these old standards mail threads. I can't put my finger on it, but perhaps it is that they only saw the "now", not the future. Where the "now" was time when a webmaster were in charge of every website, and had complete personal control.
Thank you!