about.rst (2137B)
1 About GANA 2 ========== 3 4 The GNUnet Assigned Numbers Authority (GANA) contains various registries 5 we maintain, for GNUnet other projects that need names and numbers for 6 use in network protocols. If you need to open a new registry, please 7 feel free to contact us at gana@gnunet.org. 8 9 The registry sources can be found here: https://git.gnunet.org/gana.git 10 11 History 12 ------- 13 14 Barry Leiba `wrote on April 4th 2020 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/conflict-review-dold-payto/ballot/>`_ that “Neither IANA nor participants 15 in the IETF will have any necessary expertise to evaluate registration 16 requests in the sort of registry described, and no one will be well 17 served by the creation of such a registry at IANA. It would be far 18 better to have a registration process be described in this document 19 involving experts from the industry as reviewers and maintenance of the 20 registrations by an industry organization, rather than by IANA.” 21 22 So here we are. As IETF/IANA “lack the necessary expertise to operate a 23 registry” for names and numbers used in network protocols, the GNUnet 24 project is happy to step up. 25 26 License 27 ------- 28 29 The GANA database is licensed under the GPL. See ``COPYING`` in the Git 30 repository. 31 32 Design 33 ------ 34 35 Each registry must have a unique name and all associated information 36 lives in a directory under that unique name in the Git repository. 37 38 Each registry must include at least the following files: 39 40 - ``README[.*]``: document describing the purpose of the registry in 41 English 42 - ``POLICY[.*]``: registration policy, explaining required fields and 43 the procedure for adding, updating and deleting entries 44 - ``registry.rec``: GNU recutils data file with all of the current 45 entries in the registry 46 - ``Makefile``: GNU make makefile with a ``make check`` target to run 47 the validation logic. Ideally, the registry.rec should be written 48 such that the ``check`` target is simply invoking 49 ``recfix --check registry.rec``. Additional targets to convert 50 ``data.rec`` to various formats may be defined. In particular, see 51 ``format.sh`` in the root directory of the Git repository (try 52 ``--help``).