This is just a Saturday afternoon idea, but maybe there's something to
it.

After four plus years of vigorous discussion about the value or lack
thereof in the "Namespaces in XML" recommendation, I don't believe we've
reached much substantial consensus on what namespaces are, what they do,
what they are good for, or what they are bad for.  

We've had a few fine moments come out of the discussion, though RDDL is
the only solid result I can think of - and it (alas) hasn't taken the
world by storm either.  The thought of another four or more years of
this discussion makes me want to open a restaurant instead.

Might it make sense to move namespace discussions to a forum of their
own?  This proved painfully useful during the relative URI reference
discussion, though I think that list has been shut down to archive-only.
(I can't raise http://lists.w3.org today; someone please correct me if
I'm wrong.)

As important as namespaces are to various projects,  I suspect that the
bandwidth on xml-dev may be better used by other discussions.  I've been
grateful for the existence of XSL-List, xml-schema-dev, and a few other
lists for similar reasons.

I started thinking about how much time this group has spent on one
incorrigible specification, and wondering what we might have
accomplished had there been another forum.  Giving namespaces their own
place might let us breathe a bit.

(Yes, I'd subscribe, but for me it would at least be nice to separate
the dynamics of that discussion from other discussions.)
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com

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