Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: SDK or not
Author: Sidney Markowitz Posted: 8/6/1999; 11:11:57 AM Topic: Yusuf Mehdi on Instant Messaging Msg #: 9223 (In response to 9178) Prev/Next: 9222 / 9224
Jakob -Are you saying that publishing the wire protocol would give non-programmers access that an SDK would not? Not all wire protocols are ASCII or as simple as HTTP. All publishing the protocol would do is allow some programmers to build the tools that you want that would let non-programmers embed access to IM in HTML pages.
An SDK provides programmers with the equivalent ability to build tools for non-programmers to use. The problem is that 1) An SDK is platform-specific; and 2) Specifying, writing, debugging, testing and publishing an SDK will take a lot longer than publishing the protocol specs.
Developers like Dave Winer don't want to have to wait and they don't want to be restricted to just Windows. That's why a promise of a Windows SDK sometime next year is not good enough.
Such features should be implementable in plain HTML or XML by anybody who can write ASCII
And that will take tools for non-programmers built by programmers who have access to either the protocol or an SDK. If you want it sooner and on more platforms, that means releasing the protocol.
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