[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
On Apr 29, 2004, at 9:39 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> You like the credit for being the
> "co-inventor of XML" but don't accept any role in the damage done by
> the
> gutting of ISO and the norms of standardization that stood
> in your way.
I wasn't around back then, but AFAIK, ISO committed seppuku as far as
"SGML for the Web" is concerned; Tim (Bray and/or Berners-Lee) didn't
gut it. :-)
> "As the twig is bent...", Tim. One has to
> take the long view or short term gains in technical
> specification turn into big losses in cultural cooperation.
> Internet time is bullsh*t.
It seems to me that one has to take the long AND the short view. Joint
R&D is a Good Thing; Recommendations about what appears to actually
work and would work better if the relatively small differences were
smoothed out are a Good Thing; and real honest International Standards
are a Good Thing, but they should not be promulgated until the
underlying specs have matured.
So in my very humble opinion:
-- IBEASoft should be more honest that what they are doing with the
WS-* specs are joint R&D projects, and should correct journalists who
call them "standards" or "recommendations" (except in the sense that
their marketing departments "recommend" the products built around
them).
-- W3C and OASIS should likewise avoid calling what they do 'standards'
-- they are consortium recommendations, hopefully based on an analysis
of best practice and applied theory. (The Design by Committee stuff
like WXS or XQuery is pretty much equivalent to the joint R&D projects
as far as I'm concerned, and should have some designation other than
Recommendation until best practice is clear).
-- The "real" standards organizations such as ISO, ITU, and CEFACT
should focus on sweeping up after the parade, and not pursuing pet
projects of key participants or pursuing essentially political goals .
In other words, there is plenty of credit and blame to go around for
the current state of affairs, there's been a lot of innovation but no
organization or consortium has done all that great a job of following
their own guidelines, and plenty of soul searching by a lot of people
(not just stupid journalists) is needed to improve it.
|
