Balisage Paper: XML: It was not televised after all ...
Eduardo Gutentag
Sun Microsystems
Eduardo Gutentag has been a part of the standards and XML world from even before XML existed; he proudly wears a metaphorical lapel pin that says "XML" and "SGML" and "DocBook" and "UBL". Of late his work has migrated away from the technical domain, and he now finds himself participating in the W3C Advisory Board, the Idealliance Board of Directors, and the OASIS Board of Directors, of which he has been the Chair for the past three years.
Abstract
Few may remember that XML was launched with an explicit technical and social agenda centered on the revolutionary idea that you own the content you produce. This has now come full circle and has become an almost trivial assertion (albeit far from being universally true). Yet in the meantime, while no TV cameras were watching, it facilitated another revolution, which in turn has had a global transformative effect on the way we define the words "content", "ownership" and even "freedom". Will this now unleash another deep and almost antithetical change, centered on the equally revolutionary concept that ownership of an idea is not necessarily vested upon the person who comes up with it?