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Compatible, not compliant. The case is still that if the author must
strictly
specify the end product, he has to resort to FFF or massive coordination.
I understand the problem of the upmarket product and that is a
reason some of us objected to the US government
blindly accepting the so-called "open specifications"
in the same slots as open standards. The owner
of the spec can still make it prohibitively expensive
to implement even if it is freely implementable given
they control the definition of the extensions that
make upmarket products reasonable.
Going on a related tangent because I keep seeing
references to the RSS/nEcho debates and mostly,
the "Dave is an evil SOB references" when I have
to really wonder if projects like nEcho can't by
precedent set up bigger problems:
I counsel those stepping into projects such
as nEcho to be be very careful and aware of ownership
and control issues. From what I read, the RSS situation
became what it did as much because its principal
in trying to avoid the problem of co-opting found
it necessary to co-opt. We should be wise about
this as a community. Damming Dave for trying to
do what he considered 'the right thing' is strange
although reading the contexts of the exchanges,
I see how that pattern emerged. It is like the
MicrosoftParanoids. MS came to dominate because
the early web builders made that so easy for them
to do. Witless fielding.
No slam on Ruby; I don't know the guy, but
if I were working wikis for projects like that, I
would want some strong legal rights language with
principal's and ***their employer's names*** on it that
strictly specified the rights of disposition,
extension, and so forth. When this was faced in VRML
they wisely moved the specification to an ISO
standard with a partnership between the consortium
and ISO. The early work was done online and there
was an open war for control. Smart people prevailed
because reasonable strategies were presented, but
the pattern was very predictable.
I speculate that perhaps wiki projects such as these
might take a page from how Hollywood independents
set up projects: a company of sorts is declared
for the duration of the project and all rights
are declared in advance. Given how much some believe
that process is bad and constrains them unnecessarily,
but on the other hand, without some sort of vehicle
it will come down entirely to personalities, some
thing simple and in the middle is needed.
Note that the counter example of SAX doesn't always
analogize well. For co-opting to be worthwhile, there
have to be advantages to owning the product. SAX
is one of those technologies where there is little
advantage to owning it. There can be some advantages
to building its competitor, but those are technical
advantages, not marketing advantages. I think content
languages are not of that ilk. There are definite
advantages, as PDF, Flash etc,. demonstrate to owning
these. RSS/nEcho fall into that category.
len
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Pawson [mailto:dpawson@nildram.co.uk]
At 14:09 10/07/2003 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
I note that
>PDF is zoomable, fonts are specifiable, and
>nothing stops an author from building a document
>that is WAI-compatible.
Not in pdf Len.
They keep trying. Our experience (www.rnib.org.uk) is that
blind folk still can't get it.
....... Unless they buy one of the adobe upmarket products.
regards DaveP
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