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> At the end of Walter Perry's presentation last night, C. Michael
> Sperberg-McQueen suggested that Walter was describing a "Hobbesian world of
> processes in competition...each process for itself", while for himself,
> "call me a corporatist", he preferred to work with processes based on prior
> agreement.
Hmm. This seems to be a distortion of Hobbes. The divine right of kings is
hardly a free market. Also, I don't see how Hobbesian philosophy precludes
agreement.
But on to the technical point...
> After too many years of working with web browsers, which share a common
> agreement to some extent but which still have dark corners, I know that I'm
> inclined to doubt the prospects of large-scale distributed projects run by
> competitors proving genuinely willing to abide by the terms of the
> contract. Contracts in the United States often start with the best of
> intentions, but but sometimes turn into battlegrounds, specifying the terms
> of engagement in a more bellicose style than was originally intended.
>
> I'm curious at this point how the "XML project" of agreement-building is
> proceeding. In most of my own work, I find that either I don't bother with
> contracts (my own rules files, which others have been able to adapt to
> their own needs) or the contracts sort of partially work (HTML, DocBook at
> O'Reilly).
>
> Are most people working on building agreements across communities? Are
> they working on the I-publish-you-discover approach common to smaller
> efforts and formalized by things like WSDL and (to a lesser extent) RDDL?
The approach I've seen work in projects of mine is: I suggest, you tweak, we
both decide whether to try to merge the ideas, or whether to keep separate and
use our transformations to sanitize the incoming XML. This is sort of a mix
between ad-hoc and agreed. I don't see it as a mutually exclusive choice.
--
Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One Boston: http://www.xmlconference.com/
Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management, Part 7 -
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think12.html
Keeping pace with James Clark - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/libra
ry/x-jclark.html
Python and XML development using 4Suite, Part 3: 4RDF -
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/xml-onlinecourse-bytitle/8A
1EA5A2CF4621C386256BBB006F4CEC
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