RE: Rant : "Microsoft is compliant with the XSL spec"

Subject: RE: Rant : "Microsoft is compliant with the XSL spec"
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 15:37:57 +0100
Actually, in many respects it has been because MS was early with XML (not
late) that there have been problems. They have come out with tools and
implementations _ahead_ of the specs, seen fit (for whatever reasons) to
extend the draft specs in their own directions, and used the labels of the
W3C specs being worked on (e.g. "XSL") as if their stuff was conformant.
The company suffers from putting some very smart people right out front,
and yet being slow in other ways to respond or adapt -- and not always very
clear or forthright about what it is doing. Admittedly this must be
difficult for a company of its size.

I say nothing about motives or mindset, and agree that this list shouldn't
degenerate into an MS-bashing forum. Despite one or two small if notable
slips, MS developers are apparently making genuine efforts to be good
citizens, and Jonathan Marsh in particular has been able to step in very
helpfully at times.

Nonetheless, the health of XSL as an enabling, cross-platform standard is a
concern to all of us, and a great deal of bandwidth is still being devoted
repetitively explaining to newbies how we are unable to help them ("but
this is the _XSL_ list, isn't it?"), and that what they are doing is out of
spec despite what they might have thought or heard. Any efforts we can make
to address this problem proactively, as a community, will have the double
benefit of helping the newcomers and reducing the frequency with which we
are called on, once again, to try to explain this mess nicely to one more
eager but bewildered neophyte. Publicly-available treatments of the
conformance problem (web pages we can all point to, FAQ entries etc.) all
fall into this category. (FWIW, the list owner and I have discussed some of
this off line, though like all the rest of you, it has to be said we're
already swamped.)

That's what we should do. What MS should do, beyond what its XSL team is
already doing, would surely include:

* removing or revising all the outdated, and now misleading, material from
their web site that refers to "XSL" without explaining the whole story; and
* NOT sending out uninformed marketing/training hacks (however well
meaning) like the instructor described in Warren Hedley's original post in
this thread, who misstate and misrepresent the conformance issues.

Both of these sources of disinformation that are still polluting the XSL
waters, eventually causing their victims, and the community as a whole,
time and money spent in cleanup. (A third is the coverage of "XSL" in books
in the bookstores -- what do we do about them?) In the long run, it has to
be seen as a very poor marketing strategy to push stuff this way: the days
of vendor lock-in are gone, and may never return.

But ultimately we should keep in mind that developers and their companies
have to be responsible for themselves. The lesson should be, don't take
Microsoft (or any!) marketing at face value, or you may get what you
deserve. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," etc.

Both sides are right on this one.

Respectfully,
Wendell Piez

>... My own feeling is that although 
>Microsoft were a little late into XML, the speed at which they are pushing 
>things is scary and the implementation of the spec issue, which appears to 
>effect pretty much all major software vendors to some extent or another, 
>will soon be behind us.  


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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