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   RE: [xml-dev] Competing Specifications - A Good or Bad Thing?

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an intriguing sideshow to this is that many of the most successful
technologies were either one man shows (possibly based on earlier work,
but the results are undoubtedly theirs), or accidental. C, Unix, and
Linux (dennis ritchie, ken thompson, linus torvalds respectively), gnu:
richard stallman, www: time berners-lee, windows: bill gates, etc.

even tcp/ip is really just accidental. some guys in darpa plus a few
universities start something and it escapes.

the great standards efforts, promoted in their day as the silver bullet
of programming/systems development were largely still born. ada, iso
stack, access control lists, etc. i think ws- will be the same.

xml, xslt are simple and effective. i'm getting as lost in the xml:
space as the ws- space.

which leads me to my real conclusion: simple things are good. they can
be understood, implemented, and used in the lifetime of a human being.
complex things are of no use because they can't.

so soap (if it's complexity can be hidden) will work. ws- will probably
be another iso stack because most of us won't live long enough to
understand it and workout how to use it effectively while meanwhile
simple compromises for today's tasks take over.

rick

On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 00:55, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> It depends on the local issues.  A single spec for a 
> new technology might indicate a proprietary development 
> ripe for IP exploitation.  If it works, why not?  Not 
> everything is in the commons and that assumption of 
> community property for all things web is one way to 
> sort out the naive and inexperienced including those 
> who offer up single spec/single use specifications 
> labeled or processed as standards.   Respect for IP 
> is the way forward.  IP keiretsu in the form of consortia 
> managed royalty free contributions will work both 
> for ensuring that submissions are vetted under 
> participation agreements, and for keeping as much 
> IP as is workable in the commons of jointly indemified 
> contributions.   
> 
> People make assumptions.  That is how they learn.  If 
> they don't, they fail.  Life and death in the ecosystem.
> 
> We got here because too many stopped focusing on developing 
> software and started playing the standards game.  I blame 
> the W3C squarely for that.  This community made its own 
> problems and this community will have to face up to the 
> job of fixing the mythInformation it created.
> 
> len
> 
> 
> From: Hunsberger, Peter [mailto:Peter.Hunsberger@STJUDE.ORG]
> 
> Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@ingr.com> writes:
> 
> > 
> > +1
> > 
> > except competing specifications are fine.  for new 
> > technology. competing standards are bad.  they codify 
> > practice as you say.
> 
> If true, then a single spec. would be even worse; people would be even
> more likely to assume it is the only way to do things...
>  
> 
> 
> 
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