Re: [xml-dev] It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?

[Amelia A Lewis <amyzing@talsever.com>]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 08:56:09 -0600, Peter Hunsberger wrote:
> For TCP/IP, it was
> easier and cheaper to use than Token Ring, so it crept into more places
> faster and once that happened it made no sense to have multiple standards.
> The major difference here is that
> XML and JSON can coexist much easier than TCP/IP and Token Ring so it
> wasn't an all or nothing victory in the case of JSON.

wut.

Are you thinking of token ring versus ethernet? That might make sense. 
There is no conflict between token ring (a physical layer protocol and 
hardware design) and IP (a network layer protocol on top of the 
hardware layer (if you want to use the OSI layer terminology (which is 
more complex than this discussion really needs), ethernet and token 
ring occupy (arguably) physical and data link layers, IP the network 
layer, TCP the transport layer, and something like http covers the top 
three layers, session, presentation, and application; a simpler four 
layer approach (physical, address, network, application) places token 
ring in the bottom, ip up one, tcp up another, and http at the top). 
Token ring versus ethernet was never a great power struggle, though. 
Frame relay and ATM, DSL, X.25, all existed in roughly the same (-ish) 
space, and while some may have been replaced by ethernet (or 
ethernet-over-something-else), token ring mostly lost that battle 
(unsurprisingly).

But IP runs quite well on top of token ring. There's no conflict (I ran 
multiple such networks, and the routers between them, quite a long time 
ago now). Sure, there were proprietary protocols run on top of token 
ring (maybe you could even call it a stack, though I wouldn't, they 
could and did run over other physical layers as well). And TCP will (at 
least) run on top of IPv6 as well as OG IP.

I don't think that the token ring v ethernet struggle, or even the 
TCP/IP vs {Novell, Appletalk, OSI, etc} competitions spawned the notion 
of a network effect, either, which seems implied here by reaching for a 
network stack comparison. Network effect, I think, simply refers to the 
concept of a network (which preceded the creation of electrical and 
electronic network systems), and the network effect to the fact that 
greater adoption leads to greater use leads to greater utility leads to 
greater adoption.

/network-pedant

Amy!
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis                    amyzing {at} talsever.com
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
                -- Anatole France, "Le Lys Rouge"