From: Michael Witten Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:57:38 GMT Subject: Re: What's in a name? Let's use a (uuid,name,email) triplet Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 13:47, Matthieu Moy wrote: > What's the added value of the "SHA-1" thing, here? A hash of a pair > (a, b) is exactly as unique as the pair itself (well, actually even a > bit less if you consider collisions). Your observation is correct, but I'm pushing for the SHA-1 string because it could be efficiently parsed, stored, and used; it's essentially an optimization (or a preparation for an optimization). If that's not a good way to approach it, then I'd be satisifed with just a straight (name,email) pair or any other reasonably unique string. On a more general note, the idea of a uuid is to distribute the process of canonicalizing identities. Does that not make perfect sense?