Sun’s Tim Bray, XML luminary, marks 10 years since XML 1.0 became a W3C recommendation (10th Feb 1998) with a post on his blog: a history of the people behind XML which he explains was written ten years ago.
Microsoft played an important role in the popularity of XML. I believe the company saw it as a counterweight to Java. Java was about application portability; XML was about data portability and application communication. With XML, Microsoft could do .NET and still live in a Java world.
Back in 1997 there were fireworks at the W3C when Bray, who was co-editing the XML specification with C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen, joined Netscape as a consultant. Microsoft was worried, I guess because at the time Netscape was a big rival and Microsoft thought XML might be somehow twisted to give Netscape some advantage – a puzzling idea, in hindsight, but there it is. Anyway, Microsoft insisted that Bray be removed as co-editor; Bray protested and eventually a deal was struck which put Microsoft’s Jean Paoli alongside Bray and Sperberg-McQueen as XML co-editors.
Maybe this incident explains Bray’s hostility towards the company:
Some of the people in this story are companies. Ned is Netscape and Mick is Microsoft … Mick is a domineering, ruthless, greedy, egotistical, self-centered, paranoid bastard. Whether or not he’s actually a crook is, as they say, currently the subject of litigation; but he’s not good company or a good friend. The ruthlessness and greed would not be so irritating (we swim, after all, in late-capitalist waters) were they not accompanied, at all times, by Mick’s claim to speak not in his own interest, but selflessly on behalf of his millions of customers, whose needs only he understands. Thus, anyone who disagrees is conspiring against the interests of the world’s computer users.
Perhaps in his position I would feel the same way. But is Microsoft innately more evil than other companies? I’m not convinced, though note another of Bray’s comments:
This isn’t about technology any more, and certainly not people, it’s business. The Internet business, for all the visionary rhetoric, has to do with nothing but money and power and executive ego.
Again, a little too extreme for me, but only a little. Interesting to reflect on in the context of, say, the OOXML vs ODF debate.
“Again, a little too extreme for me, but only a little. Interesting to reflect on in the context of, say, the OOXML vs ODF debate.”
At least in the Internet Explorer 4 days, the Trident team had done a few things right. I’m not sure the same can be said about the Office team. An example is this :
http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2008/02/truth-about-microsoft-office.html
I will save other readers some time by summarizing the link posted above.
Microsoft does not distribute a 64-bit compiled edition of Office, and this is somehow the end of the world as we know it.
The article is about the gap between Office compatibility claims and reality.
The lack of 64-bit edition is one of them. The lack of support of VBA in many deployment cases (Mac, Excel server, …) is another.
If you don’t find this problematic, I don’t know what will.
Thanks for trolling, by the way. I would not be surprised you are a Microsoft employee.
I don’t personally think VBA support is an issue. I’m not convinced it belongs in OOXML.
Tim