XUL Standardization: Lessons from the RSS Civil War

Hi,  

  I just stumbled over Tim Bray's blog entry titled "I
Like Pie".

  Tim comments on Sam Ruby's new initiative code-named
"Pie" to create a new RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
format to end the civil war between the RSS 0.9*
crowd, the RSS 1.0 crowd, and the RSS 2.0 crowd.
   
  I guess I'm not breaking any news here so let's move
on and see how this fits the XUL campaign.
   
  I think the RSS standardization is a great
real-world case-study and warm-up excercise for the
coming XUL standardization and Tim Bray's blog post
offers tons of insight from a veteran responsible for
the W3C XML spec among others.

  Here are some quotes:

  <tim>
  What To Call It? Call me an idealistic dreamer, but
I���d like to go on calling it RSS; a nice simple
easy-to-remember TLA [three letter acronym] that even
has a minor little beach-head in the popular
consciousness.
  </tim>  

  The wise man says stick with XUL.

  <tim>
  Take It To a Standards Org? I think that in the long
run it would be good if RSS or Pie or whatever
weren���t ���An XXX Specification���, where XXX is any
of Userland or IBM or Microsoft or Textuality or,
well, you get the idea. I think that the reasons for
this are so obvious that I���m not going to waste your
time walking through them.
  </tim>

  The wise man says a Mozilla specification is a joke.

  <tim>
     Don���t go to W3C, which is just too popular,
these days, for its own good. If we could convince W3C
to launch a Working Group (which would take months)
there would instantly be 75 or more companies who
wanted to join it, because RSS is Hot Stuff. It���s
not entirely impossible they could do a good job, but
it is entirely possible they could really screw it up.
  </tim>    
   
  The wise man says the W3C is not the place for hot
stuff such as XUL.

  <tim>
  Four Points It���s easy enough to summarize. What I
care about is that we build something that���s:

    * 100% vendor neutral,
    * implemented by everybody,
    * freely extensible by anybody, and
    * cleanly and thoroughly specified.
  </tim>

  Full story @
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/06/23/SamsPie
  

  Any comments?

   - Gerald

PS: For more info about XUL (XML UI Language) check
out the XUL Alliance Site @ http://xul.sourceforge.net

PPS: If you think this post is off-topic for the
xml-dev crowd please join the xul-talk mailinglist @
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk 

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