RE: Layering (was RE: Blueberry/Unicode/XML)

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Sure.  You won't like it and I doubt many 
here are ready to face up to it.

The problem is SGML On The Web should be  
been SGML On The Web.  The hacks to make 
it simpler made it less applicable.  Now 
the hacks are being redone and it is to become 
XML As SGML.  The difference is one 
of ownership.   A property of the commons 
was privatized (process of enclosure) 
for "the common good".  As noted by David 
Bollier, New America Foundation, "Public 
Assets, Private Profits", this is similar 
to the processes by which much of England's 
public lands were privatized for the purpose 
of the profits of a few landowners.  He also compares 
it to the patenting of human genetic codes, 
and the privatizing of water access rights 
by companies such as Vivendi ("the wars of 
the 21st century will be over water").

Has information become an "alienable right"?

The tragicomic aspect of that is how it was 
done by a small self-selected group of 
individuals who talk a lot about open software, 
processes, etc., but whose actions resulted 
in the irreversible enclosure of a public standard 
for exchanging information without compromising 
it to the predations of local systems.  Now, 
we are the predators.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Leigh Dodds [mailto:ldodds@ingenta.com]

If its the latter it appears (to me at least) as if its being driven
by an increasing distance from the SGML heritage, and the need to
deal with, and rationalise, the number of additional specifications being
built upon the XML foundations.

Any comments?