RE: Alternatives to containers/collections (was Re: Requirements for a possible "RDF 2.0")

On 2010-01-15, Michael Schneider wrote:

> I just asked, because I remembered having seen this term "quiet 
> deprecation" more than once being used in this thread, and I wondered 
> whether there is something important that I have missed.

I think the difference is rather simple. A quiet deprecation would have 
been one that wasn't discussed out in the open like this, with the 
relevant working group just deprecating the feature. Perhaps in an 
unobtrusive footnote in a minor revision of the standard, an addendum to 
it, or perhaps an "application note". Given some sort of divine 
anti-online intervention nobody would have consciously noticed, and in a 
year or two some magic, memetic cross-transfer would have caused 
everybody to cease using the feature, whereupon it could be declared 
obsolete without any further hassle.

With artifacts of the ISO era that sometimes actually happened. The 
difference is that nowadays there is no "silent" *anything*. If it's 
picked up by someone, it's going to be raised as a question on one list 
or another, and the full trail behind the decision is going to be picked 
up within instants. Today, there's no real possibility of a "silent" 
deprecation, every deprecation has to be formal, and then, in fact, very 
few standards bodies hold the power to even *formally* deprecate 
anything -- people'll just fork if they feel like it. That's just what 
competition in an environment of continually more fully shared 
information is all about.
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - decoy@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front
+358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2

Received on Friday, 15 January 2010 19:07:32 UTC