What is the difference between i-names and XNS Names?
XNS Names were offered by OneName Corporation during the period of August 2001 and June 2002 [check these dates]. This was prior to the technical protocols on which XNS were built being submitted to OASIS. During the submission and the subsequent standards development within OASIS it was decided by the Technical Committee that the XNS protocols should be split into 2 separate components. The identifier scheme was named eXtensible Resource Identifier (XRI). To ensure that there was no confusion with the prevous human-friendly term XNS Name it was decided that the new generic term for the human-friendly XRI should be i-name. I-names are simply the term now used to describe what were originally called XNS Names.
