C'mon Mike, beating on MS and Ballmer doesn't 
let all the other players off the hook.  Shall 
we drag out Bob Sutor and castigate him as a 
representation of IBM?  Shall we drag out 
Jon Bosak and do the same for Sun?  Heck, 
Jon was more out front with the stuff before 
Steve, and I was out front before him in 1989 in 
the Enterprise papers.   So blame me. ;-) 

But we didn't do it for hype.  We did it 
because we needed a way to integrate 
heterogeneous systems.  Hypertext alone 
won't do the job.  <a href="URzed" 
just ain't enough.  REST might be and that 
is definitely something to consider.

Fact is, the web services issues ARE more 
important than the semantic web at this 
time.  We really desperately need a way 
to integrate edge systems in enterprise 
bids NOW.  Otherwise, we really do have to 
surrender to a single operating system 
dominant world and It Won't Be Linux. 
Even though the details aren't right, 
the main ideas are and the web service 
thing will work even if it isn't based 
on URIs.  So to me, the discussion of 
URIs and REST is fascinating and absolutely 
should be a focus of W3C/WSIO/whoever 
discussions.  I am mildly shocked that 
Tim Bray's skunk works paper isn't 
getting more press and attention. 

Otherwise, why bother with multiple 
vendors or best of breed?  If everyone 
wants web services to go away, fine. 
Then Microsoft is our only option 
because they DO own the dominant 
operating system and de facto, "The Web".

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@x...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 9:15 AM
Cc: xml-dev@l...
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] WSIO vs. Semantic Web


2/13/2002 9:46:23 AM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...> 
wrote:

>But you can't just push it back to Ballmer. 
>That plays right into the hands of the press 
>and makes the appearance of controversy reality.
>It can't be spun as an organization (WSIO) vs 
>an initiative (Semantic Web).  It has to be 
>web service architecture A vs web service 
>architecture B.  Then it is priority of 
>investment and resources to one task or 
>the other (do we spend our time sorting 
>out the semantic web or web services?  
>can we do both and still retain our 
>imprimatur?)

I agree that the real issue is "Web Service architecture A vs Web 
Service Architecture B" not "Web Services vs Semantic Web" or "W3C 
vs WSIO".  The other activities can complement each other, even 
though they do require many of the same scarce human resources.

BUT I agree with Tim that it is ultimately Ballmer's fault that 
this is a crisis.  Nobody was smoking Web Services crack until the 
.NET initiative lit the pipe and MS started hyping the wonderful 
feeling it gave :~)