[xml-dev] It's all your fault, Edd !

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

Knowing that:

1) MSN is not compliant with the W3C Recommendations server side [1].
2) IE is not supporting the latest W3C Recommendations client side [2].
3) You need a non compliant browser (IE) to render correctly this not 
compliant site (MSN) [3].

It's an indication that:

1) The MSN guys are regular readers of XML.com [4].
2) They have been fast to apply your advise to be selfish [5]:

<quote>
*Retain control*

Nobody knows your business better than you. It's essential when planning 
to have control over as many variables as possible. If you want to start 
delivering information to your customers in XML format you might be 
faced with the choice of waiting 6 months for a standard to be 
completed, and associated reworking of your systems, or to define 
document structures that meet your business needs straight away.

There has to be a convincing case above and beyond altruism to risk your 
business with standards developed by third parties. The two main reasons 
to do this are when it's useful for creating new business or when it 
will cut costs. Needless reinvention is as stupid as blind adoption.
</quote>

More seriously, I applaud to (and fully agree with) your selfish tagline 
as long as we are speaking of internal developments, but believe that 
there should not be any compromize for web public based applications.

<disclaimer>
That being said, I haven't yet been able to publish on my sites pages 
which are both conform to the requirements of my designer when displayed 
on various browsers and those of XHTML, but I keep my sites open to any 
browser and it would be another debate.
</disclaimer>

Those of you who can read French (or are ready to use an  online 
translator) might be interested by an interview [6] recently published 
on XMLfr where Herve Crespel is analyzing the reasons to use XML to 
create "standards" which are not interoperable.

What we see here, is that being fully conform to the standards (and thus 
interoperable) is probably seen as an immediate priority for actors 
wanting to enter in a new market while it's seen as a short term danger 
for market leaders defending their position.

I would guess that in a big company such as Microsoft, you have both 
situations.

When, in the late 90's Microsoft has wanted to enter in the B2B business 
this division has probably be pushing the development of open standards 
(starting with XML), but the situation is probably seen very differently 
by units working on IE or MS Office which, in the facts, are very 
reluctant to become interoperable.

Understanding the process doesn't mean we should excuse it and I think 
that what we need for the success of open standards is just the contrary 
of what Microsoft has shown here...

We need people and organizations who implement and deploy them instead 
of just pretending!

Eric

[1] 
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmsn.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline
[2] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200110/msg00908.html
[3] http://www.msn.com/ (seen with Mozilla)
[4] http://www.xml.com (seen with any browser)
[5] http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/10/24/selfishtag.html?page=2
[6] http://xmlfr.org/documentations/articles/011011-0001
-- 
Rendez-vous à Paris pour le Forum XML.
                    http://www.technoforum.fr/Pages/forumXML01/index.html
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Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
http://xsltunit.org      http://4xt.org           http://examplotron.org
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