XML: It was not televised after all...

Eduardo Gutentag - Sun - Paper

Not a history lesson but really it will be a history lesson.

I like his presentation slides...basically he is putting his note reminders on screen like "[Insert daughter's story here]"...cute.

He also keeps changing his title and the conference title on the bottom of the screen...I hope he posts the slides....but perhaps you have to be here to get the joke.

Paul Trevithick, in 1997, called XML "the revenge of the 40-somethings".

Eduardo is providing a story of the beginnings of XML in the late 90's by way of quotes from people at the time.

"It is basically about the owner of the content. The content belongs to the creator not the makers of the document creator tools." Jon Bosak 1998,Paris.

Heard in the hall - Any priest who hears that will say 'oy veh'. - Eduardo Gutentag

XML Agenda:

• Free as in beer
• Free as in Spartacus
• Open interface
• Interchangeable = interoperable
• You own the content you produce

The use of XML in OpenOffice enabled the Linux open source explosion because they could use it within the Linux environment without having to reboot into to Windows to read.

"I have a beard and every so often I like to use it." - Eduardo (The Prophet)

The very concept of a static document may simply vanish...You start it, anybody can contribute to it, modify it, contribute to it, own it.

Questions/Comments
"if my project falls on its feet, I've got another one" - Murray Altheim

Digital library application for meta-sharing between mesh enabled (1-laptop-per-child) should they use a CC-licensed idea or nothing...Eduardo advocats nothing..




Wendell Piez -
We have these property rights because we don't want people to take what we've created and profit from it to the exclusion of us. It seems like Wendell is channeling Cory Doctrow by way of the Illiad.
Response: The issue of the defence mechanism is an important one. There are many ways of defending yourself...non-assertion covenants?

Someone else:
A big problem in the digital space is that digital items are non-fungible. I have a book and I can sell it, give it away and then not have it. But with a digitial item I can give it away and still have it in pristine format.

Jon Bosak -
A lot of the reason for saying those things in 1998 Paris is just to cause trouble.

He states that he has actually come around to stating that PDFs should be used instead of XML (at least that is what I think he said). He has a paper on it. Read it here.