RE: RE: [xml-dev] W3C Schema: Resistance is Futile, says Don Box

At 12:26 PM 6/10/2002 -0600, Aaron Skonnard wrote:
>Agreed. HTTP and HTML were not trivial to implement. Major vendors
>embraced them and made it happen. Before the public had easy-to-use
>browsers, they had no idea what resources were available to them. I
>don't remember many successful ad-hoc browser implementations.

Wow.  Do we live on different planets?

HTTP 0.9 _was_ trivial to implement, and the early HTML work wasn't exactly 
rocket science. There was a really diverse set of browser choices in the 
mid-90s before the big vendors went to war and ensured that no one else 
could afford to compete in the field.

I have a hard time seeing the rise of the vendor-dominated Web as 
inevitable, which makes me pretty much giggle at this:

>I completely agree. It was the *vendors* that made it happen. And it's
>the vendors that will make it happen with Web services. The W3C and WS-I
>are trying to steer but maybe we're not all on the same ship.

Not that vendors didn't have a role, but I hardly think it's reasonable to 
argue that vendors made it happen or that their role was necessarily positive.

Simon St.Laurent
"Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue