Re: [xml-dev] More predictions to mull over

[Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

Michael Champion wrote:

> I’m not completely sure I disagree with Elliotte’s prediction about WS-* 
> “Even a derailed train has a lot of momentum, so people will still be 
> talking about Web services in 2007. However, nobody will be listening.”  
> I don’t have firsthand knowledge of this stuff anymore, but it does 
> seems inconceivable that so many companies would spend so much money, 
> and so many smart people would spend their time, on standardizing a 
> train wreck that “nobody” is paying attention to. 

Mostly because it's being pushed by large companies that have so much 
money and so many people that they barely notice if they're wasting a 
few million dollars and a few person-years on WS-splat. When you're the 
size of IBM/Microsoft/Sun you'll back a few wrong horses along the way. 
Of course, a few smaller companies that are nothing but WS-* and for 
whom a few million dollars and a few person-years are noticeable will go 
out of business as a result of this.

> On the other hand, 
> this is more or less the story of CORBA – lots of time and money spent 
> on something that has vastly underperformed relative to its initial 
> hype

Exactly, and that's hardly the only example of lots of corporate money 
being fed into the shredder.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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