[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Michael Kay wrote:
> I think you're ignoring the bandwagon effect. Very often, if there are two
> competing specifications, people sit on the fence and don't adopt either of
> them, because they don't know which one is going to win. For example the
> OpenLook/Motif war, if you remember that one. XML was adopted so rapidly
> largely because it had no competition.
For a counter-example in the same domain, look at Gnome and KDE. Without
the overhead of horrendous licensing fees, proprietary toolkits, and other
silly restrictions, private and corporate developers have been happy to jump
on either or both the Gnome and KDE bandwagons.
It's also worth remembering that XML *did* have competition when it started
up. Its competitor, SGML, had been established for over a decade with a
small but dedicated number of vendors and specialists and a respectably
large installed base in military, academe, government, and large industry.
All the best,
David
|
