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RE: Postel's law, exceptions

• To: "'bob@w...'" <bob@w...>
• Subject: RE: Postel's law, exceptions
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 08:43:32 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

There are a lot of ex-VMS folk out here including me. 
It was a sweet operating system on a well-engineered 
platform.  When at GE, we did the CASS Automated Technical 
Information system for the Micro-VAX.

I didn't encounter LDIF but we weren't very concerned about 
rights management in those days, and we were building systems 
that had only one customer, the US Navy.

I am puzzled that rights management is being disparaged by 
some as a 'big company' topic.  If it works as it should, 
it should protect the small companies and the independents. 
I am not into the topic deeply enough to determine how 
this works with the patent issue.  Given a valid patent, 
I should think it would but the problem is precisely that 
bogus patents are proliferating.

len


From: Bob Wyman [mailto:bob@w...]

Claude L. Bullard wrote:
> DRM turns into a complex subject as I read more. 
> While not an XML topic per se, ...

	That is a subject of interpretation... You see, I defined the
License Document Interchange Format (LDIF)[1] using ASN.1. Now, since
ASN.1 is an "XML Schema Language", what that means is that the XML
encoding for LDIF is defined. In fact, it has been defined ever since
long before XML even existed... 

	Note: I've already received two flames (one more polite than
the other...) from people offering horror stories of life with LMF...
I'm surprised that so many ex-VMS folk are watching this list on a
Sunday afternoon... Let me just say that in the almost 15 years since
I worked on LMF, I have never heard a single complaint that pointed
out a fault in the code or the design of the system. *Every* complaint
I've ever heard has been traceable to improper system management, bad
data from salesmen, or improper support from field service people.
*Every* "problem" that has ever been described to me has been one that
was known at the time of design and that I provided some specific
mechanism or procedure to address. Someday, someone might come up with
something that surprises me. But, nobody has been able to do so yet.

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