• To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Competing Specifications - A Good or Bad Thing?
• From: David Megginson <dmeggin@a...>
• Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 15:25:16 -0500
• In-reply-to: <20040402183529.YFUE6150.mta03-svc.ntlworld.com@Turtle>
• References: <20040402183529.YFUE6150.mta03-svc.ntlworld.com@Turtle>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040312 Debian/1.6-3

Michael Kay wrote:

> I think you're ignoring the bandwagon effect. Very often, if there are two
> competing specifications, people sit on the fence and don't adopt either of
> them, because they don't know which one is going to win. For example the
> OpenLook/Motif war, if you remember that one. XML was adopted so rapidly
> largely because it had no competition.

For a counter-example in the same domain, look at Gnome and KDE.  Without 
the overhead of horrendous licensing fees, proprietary toolkits, and other 
silly restrictions, private and corporate developers have been happy to jump 
on either or both the Gnome and KDE bandwagons.

It's also worth remembering that XML *did* have competition when it started 
up.  Its competitor, SGML, had been established for over a decade with a 
small but dedicated number of vendors and specialists and a respectably 
large installed base in military, academe, government, and large industry.


All the best,


David

• References:
  • RE: Competing Specifications - A Good or Bad Thing?
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>

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