Re: XML protocol comparison

Laird,

Here's how I feel about this now -- let's make sure that this doesn't happen
in the future. I've spoken my piece, you have too, now let's talk about
technology and publishing, what's done is done.

If there's a specification in progress and there are obvious people who are
not represented, let's assume that there's a routing failure, as happened in
this case, and do the proactive thing, make sure that everyone who has
something to contribute has a chance to make a contribution.

I wholeheartedly support the approach of including content creators and
encouraging them to drive the process. The technology developers exist to
support and enhance their work. But, I would encourage you to broaden your
reach beyond the corporate content creators and include inviduals who
publish because they love their subject and are not playing footsy with the
companies they work for and cover. There's a new journalism developing
around the economics of the web. I think that RSS better reflects that
approach, and people who write for the web have a place at this table, as
well as people who write for big companies.

It's probably just as well that we didn't participate in ICE, because we
would have told you to scrap the whole thing and pass around links instead
of stories, and reverse the flow of dollars, pay for delivery of readers
instead of paying for the delivery of content. That seems to me how the web
dictates this must work.

Dave



----- Original Message -----
From: "Laird A Popkin" <laird@io.com>
To: <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
Cc: <dave@userland.com>; <eric@w3.org>; <bernhard.dorninger@scch.at>;
<ice-ag@egroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: XML protocol comparison


> Re: XML protocol comparison
>
>    RE: XML protocol comparison
>
> > Perhaps the perception derives from the fact
> > that you excluded your competitors from the design process of ICE.
> >   We tried to get involved, and had the door slammed in our face.
> Arrogance begets isolation, outages are always routed around.
>
> I am the chair of the ICE Authoring Group, and have been since its
> inception. As such, I cannot allow Dave's continued misrepresentation to
> go without comment.
>
> In terms of Dave's company having "had the door slammed in our face," my
> contact information has been on every release of the ICE specification,
> and I have never been contacted by anyone from UserLand about
> participation in the ICE effort. I certainly would welcome your
> participation in the ICE Network. My email address is laird@io.com (or
> laird.popkin@sothebys.com), and my office phone number is 212/774-5338.
>
> I don't know who you spoke with at Vignette, but since they don't run the
> ICE effort, you may have made a "protocol error" -- if you asked a random
> Microsoft or Adobe employee, for example, they couldn't have been too
> helpful either. Other the other hand, the people listed as contacts on the
> standard would certainly have welcomed your contact.
>
> The repeated presentation of ICE as being run by Vignette is incorrect.
> Vignette initiated the ICE effort, but from the beginning the ICE AG
> members have had equal votes, and funded ICE AG activities equally.
> Vignette does not control either the AG or its composition; applications
> for membership are administered by The GCA's IDEAlliance, an independent
> organization, and are voted on by the ICE AG members, each of whom have a
> single vote.
>
> A critical component of ICE's success thus far, I believe, is that a
> majority of the AG is and must be content companies, not vendors,
> specifically to ensure that the ICE standard is driven by market needs
> rather than vendor goals. Thus, while there are a number of vendors active
> in the AG, even if they all voted together they could not control the AG.
>
> >   Maybe Vignette will lose some of the arrogance and work openly on
> syndication technologies.
>
> Vignette doesn't run the ICE effort, and the ICE AG has always been open
> to input and participation by any interested parties.  For what it's
> worth, the Vignette employees participating in the ICE effort have never
> been arrogant; they were quite open to fundamental changes in their
> initial proposals based on arguments by other AG members.
>
> The ICE effort has been open since the beginning; I will admit that our
> efforts have been more focused on creating the standard and in working
> with participating vendors and content companies to get ICE implemented
> and deployed than in marketing the protocol to standards groups; we felt
> that was premature until we'd had sufficient experience in production to
> have more credibility.
>
> With ICE 1.0 being in production for over a year, we've produced ICE 1.1
> and are stepping up our "outreach" efforts this year.
>
> To get back to the topic of this mailing list, I can say that I would
> welcome the development of a standard approach to building protocols in
> XML. A good percentage of the ICE specification addresses fairly generic
> protocol issues (e.g. packaging, request/response, header/body, logging,
> etc.) that were required in order to achieve ICE's goals, but which could
> be addressed in a common manner across many protocols, allowing the ICE AG
> to focus on the issues around content exchange by layering over a generic
> messaging standard, in the same way that we layer over generic transport
> standards (HTTP, SSL, sockets, mail, etc.), XML, and so on. I would hope
> that we could participate in the development of such a standard in order
> to (1) contribute the real-world production experience that ICE has
> accumulated, and (2) ensure that the generic XML messaging standard would
> support ICE's needs.
>
>    Dave
>
> - Laird Popkin, CTO, Sotheby's Holdings and Chair, ICE Authoring Group.
>   laird.popkin@sothebys.com, laird@io.com, 212/774-5338.
>
>

Received on Saturday, 20 May 2000 05:03:25 UTC