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You asked. In deference to Tim, this really
is raving. Busy people hit delete now.
I don't accept both. I acknowledge both.
I'm hoping for better because I'm expecting
worse. They say worse is better. We choose
our karma by dharma or kama, but we choose.
To only be ronin, one fights for one's
lord. That I have done. To be samurai,
one fights for the way and the land.
A 'just business' attitude
takes the samurai and makes him
yaguska. When the lord no
longer enables the way, it is
corrupted, thus corrupting the heart,
thus corrupting the land.
When I first saw the draft for ISO 8879, it
struck me that this was better than
OOP because OOP would never scale and it
would never be fully interoperable but it
sure was technically attractive. SGML was
rough reading and hard to understand. That
was the technical call. But when I
met Goldfarb and the people that were
working with him on markup, I was impressed
with their commitment to protecting the
information from the host system, and
making sure it could outlive it.
Although I could not be their technical
equal, I could fight for them. That was
the call of my heart.
To this day, I believe strongly that the
world owes those people an incalculable
debt, not just for markup, but for setting
an immaculate example of passionate
commitment to doing the right thing the
right way.
Cut the corners. Get the cool stuff out
there. Then hold on to your pocketbook
when a group decides it's time to play
"Revenge of the Crimson Assurance" with
your product because the IP wasn't worth
protecting. I don't know how to fix
inequities in the market, but I have
to find a way to protect customers
from them. Any of us in caveat vendor
markets do. It's called, indemnity.
Somewhere between going fast
enough to make the biggest splash and
moving deliberately to secure
a future is the right way where better
is good enough and worse is seen for
what it is. All I can say for sure is
that anyone designing software products
today without understanding that the
product must interoperate both within
its local product suite and across
its market competitor's products is
not paying attention. What I want
is a way to know if it does or
not without having to find the guys
who built it and ask.
len
From: Frank [mailto:frank@therichards.org]
Len,
I just have to ask. Why do you find it ok for business folks to do any
slimy thing short of armed robbery in search of making money, but
morally reprehensible for techies to cut procedural corners in preparing
specs for doing cool stuff.
Lawsuits and bespoke statutes are 'just business', but you have a real
attitude of outrage about 'rough consensus and running code'. I can see
getting upset about both, or accepting both as 'mammal stuff' but just
plain don't get the different outlooks on the two.
Most sincerely,
Frank
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