RE: [xml-dev] Near and Far (Was RE: [xml-dev] A parentless elemen t that is not the document node - how?)

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

Right.  The building has to be kept up to modern standards or 
it becomes a ruin that tourists and architecture students visit. 
It has value but not maximum value.

What I have in mind are the ventures that get ahead of the 
market for one reason or another.  Some because, for example, the hardware 
isn't quite up to the task; others, because the developer 
community has moved on to newer and brighter tasks. As 
I mentioned, the VRML editors are example of the former.  An 
example of the latter is TCP/IP.  It was on its way to 
the scrapyard when this WWW thing came along to revive it.
Sometimes, a bit of volunteer work precedes the profitable 
work.  And that is fine too.

The trick of good management is to make match people's needs 
to profitable ventures.  That pays for maintenance and upgrades. 

len


From: Liam Quin [mailto:liam@w3.org]

There were other buildings in the UK that were listed, so that
the only changes allowed were repairs and restorations that were
"in keeping", but where the owners couldn't afford that sort of
work.  The buildings generally fell to ruin.

> I believe there probably are products out there in 
> niches where the technology or standard was ahead 
> of its time that can now be reclaimed.

Yes, or could be reclaimed if we didn't live in a world where
profit came before people's needs.