Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 3/31/2001
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 3/31/2001; 6:36:57 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 3/31/2001 Msg #: 22132 Prev/Next: 22131 / 22133
Heads up: A key difference between SOAP and XML-RPC.
Eric Kidd pledges interop with "BDG" in C/C++. Happy!
I posted an update re soapware.org.
Mr and Mrs Simmons: Favorite Books.
NY Times: "..the time has come, in the long debate over music in the digital age, to stop discussing the actions and motives of those who produce and distribute music and to start considering the actions and motives of those who actually consume it."
Take a programmer to lunch
Dan Gillmor comments on Michael Tchong's pathetic call to buy stuff on the Web on April 3. "Don't buy things just because they're online," says Dan. "Buy them because you need them."
I have a better idea. On April 3 take a programmer to lunch. Get him out and away from the keyboard. Show him that the sky is still blue and that sunshine feels good. Give him a nice meal and a pat on the back.
"Good job," you might say, "Surviving all that michegas in the dotcom period is quite an accomplishment!"
Inner-critic
I have a very strong inner-critic.
Here's how it works.
I get a great idea.
He says: "Why didn't you think of that sooner?"
I get defensive.
I start to reason with the critic.
Today I got fed up.
"Because I'm a good person."
Nuf said.
More SOAP politics
Key quote from yesterday. "I think I've offered [Microsoft] 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 may come a day when engineers leave Microsoft to get people to use their software, because the environment is so polluted by Microsoft's various attempts to suck all developers in. Been around the block too many times. I said no to Sun, and I said no to Microsoft. I am an independent developer. I don't mind competition. But I refuse to be assimilated. Not a joke.
I like low-tech understandable interop. I don't like vague and complicated specs that have wild cards and aren't frozen. I want to offer my users choice. If they don't like our software, it's easy to switch to something else. (I want choice too, some of our apps are better implemented in other environments.) The only way to get rid of lock-in is to make it easy to be compatible. That's why we did "BDG", because the full SOAP spec is so damned hard to implement it will probably only be implemented by Microsoft.
That's where the assimilation comes in. If the only environment that works with all the others is Microsoft's we're all fucked, including Microsoft. Not that it's my job to worry about Microsoft, it's not, but I'm willing to sell them (if only they were willing to sell me).
On the soapbuilder list, "I work so openly, the ideas just must be strange. How could I be willing to give them something for free without somehow poisoning them?"
This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:57:01 PM.
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