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Re: agreements vs. Hobbes

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Subject: Re: agreements vs. Hobbes
• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 22:00:41 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: Message from "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...> of "Thu, 08 Aug 2002 09:21:48 EDT." <4.2.0.58.20020808085109.020d6f10@p...>
• Sender: uche.ogbuji@f...

> At the end of Walter Perry's presentation last night, C. Michael 
> Sperberg-McQueen suggested that Walter was describing a "Hobbesian world of 
> processes in competition...each process for itself", while for himself, 
> "call me a corporatist", he preferred to work with processes based on prior 
> agreement.

Hmm.  This seems to be a distortion of Hobbes.  The divine right of kings is 
hardly a free market.  Also, I don't see how Hobbesian philosophy precludes 
agreement.

But on to the technical point...


> After too many years of working with web browsers, which share a common 
> agreement to some extent but which still have dark corners, I know that I'm 
> inclined to doubt the prospects of large-scale distributed projects run by 
> competitors proving genuinely willing to abide by the terms of the 
> contract.  Contracts in the United States often start with the best of 
> intentions, but but sometimes turn into battlegrounds, specifying the terms 
> of engagement in a more bellicose style than was originally intended.
> 
> I'm curious at this point how the "XML project" of agreement-building is 
> proceeding.  In most of my own work, I find that either I don't bother with 
> contracts (my own rules files, which others have been able to adapt to 
> their own needs) or the contracts sort of partially work (HTML, DocBook at 
> O'Reilly).
> 
> Are most people working on building agreements across communities?  Are 
> they working on the I-publish-you-discover approach common to smaller 
> efforts and formalized by things like WSDL and (to a lesser extent) RDDL?

The approach I've seen work in projects of mine is: I suggest, you tweak, we 
both decide whether to try to merge the ideas, or whether to keep separate and 
use our transformations to sanitize the incoming XML.  This is sort of a mix 
between ad-hoc and agreed.  I don't see it as a mutually exclusive choice.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One Boston: http://www.xmlconference.com/
Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management, Part 7 - 
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think12.html
Keeping pace with James Clark - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/libra
ry/x-jclark.html
Python and XML development using 4Suite, Part 3: 4RDF - 
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/xml-onlinecourse-bytitle/8A
1EA5A2CF4621C386256BBB006F4CEC

• References:
  • agreements vs. Hobbes
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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