Larry Masinter

Summary

I'm a Principal Scientist at Adobe Systems. Lately I'm focused on Internet and Web standards, primarily through W3C and IETF. I'm interested in the general area of improving network-mediated human communication, but also in interoperability, reliability, as well as increasing function. I'm also interested in social networking, virtual worlds, and the underlying architecture that would allow these diverse applications to interoperate securely.

I've worked on many projects at Adobe, where I've been for over 10 years. Adobe Creative Suite 4 included eXtensible Metadata Platform (XMP) support for managing workflow metadata for compound objects and multimedia, including temporal metadata for describing time-specific metadata for video and audio. A very long-term archiving prototype was developed which securely spread content among multiple service providers (see paper). Other work ranged from designer interactions with programming and software development tools, enterprise applications, forms processing.

Prior to Adobe (and a short transit through AT&T Labs), I worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). In the 90's, I worked on web and Internet standards, document management systems, digital libraries, as well as an experimental project ("documents.com") for Internet hosted services. In the '70s and '80s, I worked on the Interlisp system (microcode, programmer tools, graphics environment, Lisp-coded operating system). I helped develop the Common Lisp standard. My background includes early work on Artificial Intelligence and software systems for it. In the early 70's, I worked on the DENDRAL project at Stanford.

Standards Activities

In the W3C, I've participated both in technology development and in policy. I've helped evolve the Internet and the web through contributions and leadership in standards groups. In the IETF I've mainly worked in the Applications Area, and on theIETF Applications Area Direcorate.

I was reelected to the W3C Technical Architecture Group for another two-year term starting in 2011. I'm helping evolve the web architecture to be more relevant to the future of the web. In the past, I was on the W3C Advisory Board (1998-2001) and a member of the IETF/W3C coordination group (liaison group between IETF and W3C.)
I was chair of the (first) HTTP working group. We developed HTTP/1.1, which improved the performance and reliability of the web significantly. There is a new HTTPbis working group which is updating the specification to include errata and fix some other problems.
I chaired of URI working group, working toward defining standards for locating, naming, and describing resources on the Internet. The URI working group closed after defining standards for URLs, although the work continued, revising the URI registration process, bringing the URI specification to Full Standard status, and updating the definitions of several URI schemes. More recently, the IRI working group is revising the definitions of non-ASCII URLs ("Internationalized Resource Identifiers").
I helped form the WebDAV working group and develop the specification. For example, I helped organize the first WebDAV Interoperability testing event.
In the Internet Fax Working Group, I authored several RFCs. As part of the work on Internet Fax, I also participated various ITU-T activities.
I was a member of the W3C XForms working group as it was formed out of the HTML group. Previously, I developed file-upload in HTML and participated in other forms design issues.
I helped start standards work on Common Name Resolution. At the time, I was also on the technical advisory board of RealNames.
Content negotiation is a mechanism by which communication can be made effective through translation and filtering. Work on content negotiation parameters and protocols happens in the CONNEG Working Group, as well as in the W3C. I wrote some of the RFCs and designed some of the protocol elements.
I was active in Internet Printing, URNs, HTML over mail, electronic commerce, content negotiation, caching and proxy, spatial location protocols, Internationalization, use of character sets in Internet protocols, etc.

Publications

Internet Drafts

IETF documents still under development:

masinter-dated-uri The "tdb" and "duri" URI schemes: January 2011.
ietf-iri-4395bis-irireg Guidelines and Registration Procedures for New URI/IRI Schemes.
ietf-iri-3987bis Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs), October 2010, in IRI working group.
ietf-httpbis-* update to RFC 2616 HTTP/1.1 in seven sections:
- ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging "URIs, Connections, and Message Parsing"
- ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics "Message Semantics"
- ietf-httpbis-p3-payload "Message Payload and Content Negotiation"
- ietf-httpbis-p4-conditional "Conditional Requests"
- ietf-httpbis-p5-range "Range Requests and Partial Responses"
- ietf-httpbis-p6-cache "Caching"
- ietf-httpbis-p7-auth "Authentication

Not actively being developed but still of minor interesting:

masinter-mime-web-info MIME and the Web, January 2011.
ietf-ltans-notareq Requirements for Data Validation and Certification Services; A. Schmidt, T. Gondrom, L. Masinter, December 2005.
newtrk-interop-reports "Formalizing IETF Interoperability Reports", Larry Masinter, October 2005.

IETF RFCs

These are publications of the Internet Engineering Task Force; some are "on the standards track", some are informational documents, and one is satire.

RFC 6068 "The 'mailto' URI Scheme", M. Duerst, L. Masinter, J. Zawinski, October 2010.
RFC 4395 "Guidelines and Registration Procedures for New URI Schemes", Tony Hansen, Ted Hardie, Larry Masinter, February 2006.
RFC 3986 "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", Tim Berners-Lee, Roy Fielding, Larry Masinter, January 2005.
RFC 3778 "The application/pdf Media Type", Ed Taft, Jim Pravetz, Steve Zilles, Larry Masinter, May 2004.
RFC 3553 "An IETF URN Sub-namespace for Registered Protocol Parameters." Michael Mealling, Larry Masinter, Ted Hardie, Graham Klyne. June 2003.
RFC 3470 "Guidelines For The Use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) within IETF Protocols", Scott Hollenbeck, Marshall Rose, Larry Masinter, Jan 2003.
RFC 2972 "Context and Goals for Common Name Resolution", N. Popp, M. Mealling, L. Masinter, K. Sollins, October 2000.
RFC 2938 "Identifying Composite Media Features", G. Klyne, L. Masinter, September 2000.
RFC 2854 "The 'text/html' Media Type", L. Masinter, D. Connolly, June 2000.
RFC 2732 "Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's", R. Hinden, B. Carpenter, L. Masinter. December 1999.
RFC 2718 "Guidelines for new URL Schemes". L. Masinter, H. Alvestrand, D. Zigmond, R. Petke. November 1999.
RFC 2616 "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1" R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, T. Berners-Lee. June 1999.
RFC 2532 "Extended Facsimile Using Internet Mail." L. Masinter, D. Wing. March 1999.
RFC 2542 "Terminology and Goals for Internet Fax." L. Masinter. March 1999.
RFC 2534 "Media Features for Display, Print, and Fax." L. Masinter, D. Wing, A. Mutz, K. Holtman. March 1999.
RFC 2397 "The 'data' URL scheme." L. Masinter. August, 1998.
RFC 2396"Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax. T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter, August 1998.
RFC 2388 "Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data." L. Masinter, August 1998.
RFC 2368 "The mailto URL scheme." P. Hoffman, L. Masinter, J. Zawinski. July, 1998.
RFC 2324 "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)." L. Masinter. April 1, 1998. This has a serious purpose -- it identifies many of the ways in which HTTP has been extended inappropriately.
RFC 1867 "Form-based File Upload in HTML." E. Nebel & L. Masinter. November 1995.
RFC 1738 "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)." T. Berners-Lee, L. Masinter & M. McCahill. December 1994.
RFC 1737 "Functional Requirements for Uniform Resource Names." K. Sollins & L. Masinter. December 1994.

Talks & Other Publications

A sample of past presentations and other documents:

(11/10) HTML.Next Panel talk W3C TPAC Plenary, November 2010. Overview of disagreements about what standards are for and how to write them.
(12/07) HTTP: how we got here and where we should go, comments for HTTPbis working group at IETF 70, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
(3/06) A System for Long-Term Document Preservation, Larry Masinter and Michael Welch; appeared in Archiving 2006.
(8/05) Requirements for Data Validation and Certification Services, presentation for Long-Term Archiving and Notary Service working group.
(10/03) Introduction of Tim Berners-Lee for Computer History Museum award.
(8/03) Position on the Binary Interchange of XML Infosets for the W3C workshop on Binary Interchange of XML Information Item Sets.
(3/02)Presentation, Delivery Context in Internet Protocols, and Position Paper, for W3C Device Independence Workshop on Delivery Context.
(3/01) History of Internet Personal Appliances in IETF. Short talk at IETF IPAC (Internet Personal Appliance Control) session.
(6/00) Converging WAP and the Web, talk about eliminating divergence between Web and protocols for mobile devices (WAP at the time.)
(4/00) The Future of Web Standards and Technologies. Brief overview, for "Engineering the Web" symposium at Sun Microsystems in Boston and AT&T Web Week.
(4/00) Internationalization of URLs, a summary for the Internationalized Domain Name working group.
(1/00) Issues using HTTP in Protocols, at Open meeting on XML in protocols.
(9/99) Problems URIs don't solve. Presentation at TWIST 99, The Workshop on Internet-scale Software Technologies, Internet Scale Naming.
(7/99) Keynote Address: Building Internet Systems of Lasting Value. (Available as powerpoint and PDF).
(9/98) Tutorial: Internet Technologies for Digital Libraries. (available as a directory of pdf files).
(4/98) Tutorial: Internet Standards for the Web, Part I and Part II, with notes, for 7th World Wide Web Conference.
(97) Internal Xerox newsletter about 'documents.com' project (early hosted Software as a Service project), as well as presentation
(10/96) Internationalization and Multilingualism in Web Standards (in Powerpoint and HTML).
(96) Standards and all that, talk at the IBM Almaden New Paradigms for Using Computers workshop.
(3/96) Digital Libraries, Document management, and the World-Wide Web presentation for Multi-Media Japan.
(1/96) Document Images on the Internet for 1/96 SPIE conference.
(11/95) PARC Forum, "Document Management and the Net". Most of the info is in the much smaller html version.
(96) Tutorial, The State of Web Standards, WWW5 conference (also in PowerPoint).
(10/95) Document Management and Electronic Commerce for International Conference on Electronic Commerce.
(6/95) INET'95: Document Management, Digital Libraries and the Web. There's also a newer draft available than what went into the online proceedings.
(3/95) Rich Interaction in the Digital Library. CACM, April 1995.
(12/94) Collaborative Information Retrieval: Gopher from MOO at INET'94. This application won coolest application at GopherCon '93.
(1988)Larry Masinter. Common LISP Cleanup. A description of the process of "cleaning up" the Common Lisp standard. Did I invent the "Issue List" for standards? See Wikipedia article and cleanup proposal template.
(1986) CommonLoops: merging Lisp and object-oriented programming, OOPLSA '86. Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications.
(1982) Richard P. Gabriel, Larry Masinter. Performance of Lisp Systems. 1982 ACM Symposium on LISP and Functional Programming.
(1981) Warren Teitelman, Larry Masinter. The Interlisp Programming Environment. IEEE Computer, April 1981.
(1980) Larry Masinter, L. Peter Deutsch. Local Optimization in a Compiler for Stack-Based Lisp Machines. 1980 Lisp Conference. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1980.
(1980) Overview and Status of DoradoLisp, 1980 Lisp conference.
(1980) Larry Masinter, Global Program Analysis in an Interactive Environment (PhD thesis).
(1973) H. Brown, L. Masinter, An Algorithm for the Construction of the Graphics of Organic Molecules, Stanford Computer Science Department, STAN-CS-73-361, 1973.
(1972) H. Brown, L. Masinter, L. Hjelmeland, Constructive Graph Labeling Using Double Cosets, Stanford Computer Science Department, STAN-CS-72-318, 1972.