OSS vs W3C? was: Next Round

[Simon St.Laurent]

At 02:15 PM 1/21/99 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>Bill la Forge wrote:
>> Open Source Software and vendor controlled standards bodies, IMHO, are a
poor marrage.
>> The advantage of Java and XML is that they let you do significant work
without the need
>> for a large team effort.
>
>Say what?
>
>Java is not open source; there is an open-source version (Kaffe),
>but it's not yet ready for prime time (feel free to contradict me
>if you know otherwise).
>
>Java is a vendor-controlled standard (maybe soon to go away).
>
>XML is a vendor-consortium-controlled standard.

I think you missed his point, which I suspect has something to do with the
fact that XML and Java are good foundations on which we can layer further
work (SAX, MDSAX, etc.) without having to turn it over to a bunch of
vendors who can't be trusted to do the right things for users (including
developers).

>If you don't like these processes, try IETF or ISO.

Or, better yet, you can try to get organizations that are already
custodians of important projects to open the doors.  Sun hasn't been happy
about it, but they're doing it, with a lot of grumbling.  We'll see what
happens to the W3C over the next few years, but I hope for similar changes.

Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer / Building XML Applications (March)
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http://www.simonstl.com

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