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6/10/2002 11:23:06 AM, "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com> wrote:
>. Perhaps my choice of the term 'political' was incorrect.
> Indeed 'self preserving' and 'self perpetuating'
> are better words to use to describe the current
> W3C processes
I think that's a proper use of the word "political" -- we say that
a decision was "political" if it appeared to be more based on
considerations of perpetuating or advancing someone's position
of authority in a government, company, or organization than in
reaching the collective goals.
Nevertheless, I think in the W3C Schema case, the motivations are
more subtle. I agree with John Cowan's assessment:
"self-censorship ("gotta use the official schema language, even
if we think it sux") MAY be operating here."
It's sortof meta-politics -- "if we open that can of worms, we'll
get into some really ugly politics, so let's not open it."
The result is a strongly conservative desire to move forward
without breaking anything. Unfortunately, there are areas in which
this just isn't possible -- schema languages and the irreconciliable
differences between the DOM and XPath data models come to mind.
Some bones are going to have to be re-broken and re-set cleanly for
XML to walk without a limp. [Sorry!]
There are other areas where there may be more ability to reconcile
positions that seemed to be irreconciliable, for example SOAP and
REST can probably be subsumed under an overall web services
architecture.
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