xml-dev - Re: XT, OpenSource and altruistic effort

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Peter,

I fully agree with what you've written, and I'd like to add some few
comments...

Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
><snip/> 
> Firstly we all owe an enormous debt to James Clark. It is usually invidious
> to single out individuals, but James has been a keystone in the XML
> edifice. A particular value has been that he has developed tools in
> parallel with the specs so that it has been possible to evaluate the value
> of new proposals. His parsers form the basis of many XML tools at present.

The process to develop a tool to validate a spec has been invaluable.

I have joined the XSLT wagon quite late and was immediately able to test
my understanding of the working drafts on XT which was kept in sync.

I had never seen this happening before.

> Some people commented that it was a pity that high-quality code like XT
> should lapse. Having written tools myself, I sympathise, but there is also
> the realisation that - at a certain point - energies are often spent better
> elsewhere. It is particularly valuable that we are seeing virtual
> communities who are looking to pick up on the efforts of individuals or
> companies - xml.apache.org is an excellent and valuable example.

There is a vision of open source developers as people who must support
forever any line of code they have delivered.

We'll discourage everyone considering developing open source if we
wanted to enforce this assumption !

An open source developer may, on the contrary, feel relatively free to
leave what he has developed : if his development was useful enough,
other developers will probably maintain it. If it was not, why should he
bother ?

> <snip/>
>         What we are starting to see is the pattern of an individual building an
> early implementation and then a group, often with CVS, taking on the
> development phase. I'd urge XML-DEVers with time and enthusiasm to consider
> how they might help in communal efforts.

See you on 4xt then (nothing won't happen without your help).

Thanks

Eric
-- 
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org              http://ducotede.com
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