xml-dev - Re: XPointer's sleeping ???

[<david@megginson.com>]

Simon St.Laurent writes:

 > I've spent far too much of the last two days pondering this issue,
 > and the only thing I can come up with (besides opening the W3C to
 > the entire planet minus the sales and marketing staffs of the
 > world) is the W3C taking a less exclusive approach to its work.
 > The W3C already accepts notes from members that are the work of
 > non-W3C processes - in other words, maybe six people from one
 > company and some guy from another company were talking at a bar,
 > and a proposal came out... without all the overhead and approval
 > processes of the W3C.

Yes, but the status of W3C NOTE has essentially no value -- it's just
the W3C's way of saying "we've put this up at our web site and posted
a response, but that doesn't mean that we really have anything to do
with it."  Some marketing departments like to exploit any confusion in
the general public and talk about notes as if they were standards, but
woe to the programmer who bases anything on a NOTE (as with those who
based implementations on the late and unlamented XML-Data NOTE).

As far as I understand things, there is no automatic process for W3C
NOTES -- a W3C staffer posts a response and then they just sit there
forever, unless some Activity happens to want to use them as input
(but they can use non-W3C material like XSchema as input as well).
The only advantage is that NOTEs sit around in a high-visibility
location, and presumably, the visibility is a perk that the members
will want to keep for themselves.

That said, there are a lot of small, $5K/year W3C members -- it
shouldn't be hard to find at least one of them who would be willing to
put something like XSchema forward as a NOTE, if someone else is
willing to deal with all of the bureaucratic overhead and paperwork.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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