Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 3/30/2001
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 3/30/2001; 6:57:40 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 3/30/2001 Msg #: 22131 Prev/Next: 22130 / 22132
DaveNet: Who are your gatekeepers? By Paul Andrews.
The W3C published the agenda for the Web Services Workshop in April, in San Jose.
Dan Lyke: "If I had the patience to go back and do it again, I'd go to the hardest-to-get-into school I possibly could, and party my ass off, doing just enough work to pass."
Last night in the middle of the rush in SOAP-land, Conversant released an XML-RPC interface for their browser-based content system. Way to go, keep on truckin.
Don Box: A brief history of SOAP. Don is a co-author.
What a day. The phone is ringing off the hook. Swamped with email. More reasons for a slim SOAP, deploying in Flash and embedded systems. Keep the downloads small. Run with less memory. These aren't my major concerns, I want to lower the barrier to entry so my friends can play in the SOAP tub without fear. "BDG" struck a nerve. It's a change, but a lot of people were thinking the same thing, either afraid or unable to say it publicly. A sliver of SOAP is enough, for now, for many.
But before I claim victory, I still want to get Microsoft on board. I had an offlist politics-only discussion with Marshall Goldberg, the funny DeKovenish diplomat at Microsoft. "We can get back on track quickly," I said. Not sure if he agreed or disagreed, but he was friendly about it.
Last night we overhauled our SOAP 1.1 validator. I posted a heads-up at 8:20PM, by 9PM the validator was running again. Simon Fell's 4s4c validated right away, as did Fredrik Lundh's Python implementation and Paul Kulchenko's SOAP::Lite for Perl. I'm going to tweak the tests today, I expect to break Fredrik's code right away, unless he's really fast. ";->"
At 9AM we were scheduled to close discussion on the Busy Developer's Guide, but we pushed it back another 24 hours to get more chance for bug-fixes and buy-in. The new drop-dead date for pushback is 9AM Saturday Pacific.
If you're going to implement this subset of SOAP please post a note on the DG or send me a private email. (I've already gotten four private emails from important implementations pledging support for the BDG. Please, if at all possible, make your statement publicly, so everyone who's sitting on the fence can see the rapid support that's developing for the BDG.)
Hannes Wallnöfer: "I'm working on a SOAP library for Java. I'm doing this based on the Helma XML-RPC library for Java I wrote, using the BDG as a guide."
Roberto Brega: "We are going to have the full SOAP 1.1 implementation, server-side and client-side on XO/2, our real-time system for mechatronic products. We committed ourselves to the interoperability with Dave's SOAP subset. We will validate our implementation on Monday."
The Apache Group has offered qualified support for BDG.
Thanks to XML.Com for the pointer.
What is identics.com?
So far I've explicitly asked for support from Python and Microsoft. The offer is open to everyone, of course, by its nature. I wanted to specifically ask for the help of Python because we have a long history of excellent collaboration with Fredrik and Zope, and our languages are so close, as are our philosophies. It's a no-brainer.
I explicitly invited Microsoft because they're The Main Gorilla in this space. I think I've offered them a sweet deal, a way to enable independent and open source developers to work to make Dot-Net an even greater success than it would be if it were a closed bathtub. Dead developers don't write code, and some of us would rather die that work in a Microsoft environment. (No disrespect to their software, but the price in freedom is too high.)
There's no poison pill here for Microsoft, unless swallowing your pride and letting an independent developer have some influence on his destiny is too high a price. This is an acid test for MS. If they can't handle well-thought-out pushback from me, the co-inventor of the technology they're using to dominate the world, you gotta figure they won't take pushback from anyone.
I also asked Microsoft for support because I, however unwisely, have a soft spot in my heart for the company and for Bill. I have a long relationship with Microsoft dating back to 1981. Bill helped me get going on the Internet, with his response to one of the very first DaveNets. He's often been willing to push back to me, and I appreciate that. That's what I call R-E-S-P-E-C-T. To Bill, it's time to ante up again, in the only way that matters. Let's have our software work together, without either of us swallowing a poison pill. That's true power. This may be a detour for your guys, but understand it's a detour for us too. We were ready with this stuff three years ago.
To everyone, if you have questions, comments or suggestions on the BDG, please state them today. Thanks and I look forward to whatever comes next. ;->
This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:57:01 PM.
© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.