Re: [xml-dev] RE: Encoding charset of HTTP Basic Authentication

[cbullard@hiwaay.net]

Things changed because the market changed.  In the 1980s the markets  
for software in Europe were to put it mildly, soft in comparison to  
the domestic markets.  On the other hand, as someone who was working  
in a company that sold to the Middle East and Europe at that time we  
certainly were aware of internationalization as well as the other  
problems of the smaller markets such as the intense tribalism that  
forced us to hunt through every document we shipped for any drawing  
that suggested a Star of David, mentioned Israel, etc.  For all the  
good ideas, the problems of European markets are also there.

It took the consolidation of a lot of different companies around  
Microsoft products to change the vertical stacks into horizontal ones.  
  The web was the next impetus but overall, until a truely integrated  
international market existed, there were few compelling market  
arguments for it.  The work follows the money.  Sad but so.

The Chinese cooperation with efforts such as X3D are notable.  They do  
tend to look for the bits being ignored over here and figure out ways  
to profit by them, and interesting habit for a Communist country, and  
smart.

<aside>The Americans aren't unaware.  We tend to regard all markets as  
profit centers and leave the social work to social workers.  For all  
the talk in the last twenty years about openness, the most profitable  
businesses in this industry are a) American and b) closed.   No one  
plays what's mine is mine and what's your's is mine as well as Apple  
plays it and others such as Amazon and Facebook are shuttering the web  
blinds to plays from companies that rely on openness such as Google  
even as some free ride on Google openness and sharing in technologies  
such as Android.

I believe the change from cooperation to close and capture has come to  
the web overall.  How this will play out in standards and  
specifications is pretty easy to guess.  It is going to get  
increasingly harder for the innovators despite all political speech to  
the contrary.  This is a good time for the young ones among us to  
think long and hard about their ambitions and values given that so  
much of what they have been taught about the web philosophies while  
right in spirit are increasingly unviable in practice.  The bad old  
days are coming back, Michael.  Just one opinion...</aside>

len

Quoting Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>:

> On 02/02/2012 14:45, cbullard@hiwaay.net wrote:
>> Not just a little Euro-centric jealousy there, Michael?
>>
> More frustration than jealousy, at all the good work that has come  
> to naught over the years, and all the people who didn't get the  
> recognition they deserved. But I guess that European designers  
> aren't the only ones whose ideas have been ignored in the relentless  
> industry pursuit of mediocracy. All one can say is, things are far  
> better today than they used to be around the 1980s - at least for  
> Europeans; there's still a woeful ignorance in the West of all the  
> interesting things happening in Japan and China, because they read  
> our language and we don't read theirs (plus they know the value of  
> listening, lurking, and learning).
>
> Michael Kay
> Saxonica
>
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