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RE: XML/RDF

• To: 'Uche Ogbuji' <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Subject: RE: XML/RDF
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 15:34:26 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

Welcome to the position SGMLers were in before 
the markup market driven by HTML took off.  A 
few of us did fine as consultants; others had 
some products but shaky companies.   Look at 
the economic history of SoftQuad before the web. 
Some others did well servicing the big deep pockets 
of CALS and the auto industry, but in the mainstream, 
markup was written off as dead and obsolete.  The 
serious technical and personal chasms in the community 
itself didn't help matters, but it drew lines that 
helped some help themselves to polity and glory.

Selah.

Some markets are accidents of history and have 
little or nothing to do with the quality of the 
technology or the uses to which one can put it. 
Until something hits, attention is elsewhere. 
RDF may get a hit like that or it may not.  It 
may get traction in some niches only to have 
some subset upstart that does 20% for 80% of the 
users and that goes like heck, the promoters of 
teh subset get political clout, and then they 
set out to show how all the previous RDF work 
and designs were deeply flawed and that they can 
do a better job with a simpler system.  And they 
win.  Or RDF is a technology that moves along drafting 
on the success of some mini-app like RDDL and 
that gets just enough traction to kickstart growth 
in the community.

No one knows for sure.  Ever.

If others aren't making money with RDF and you 
are, that's more for you.  No charity required.

len


From: Uche Ogbuji [mailto:uche.ogbuji@f...]

What can I do with XML that I can't do with simple comma-delimited files?  And 
don't tell me "use XML tools to process it.  I may not have any stinking XML 
tools around because I can't think of anything useful to do with them!

As I said, *no* technology can be "justified" to a committed skeptic.  So why 
bother trying?

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