I've just come back to xml-dev after a little absence, during which
I've been busy working, watching my already small investment portfolio
shrink daily, and using my leisure hours to get a private pilot's
license instead of debating standards.  I don't have any particular
position in the current debates on XForms vs. Microsoft's thingy, XML
1.1, etc. -- most of it fails my who-else-but-us-could-possibly-care
test -- but I'm delighted to see W3C committee members debating and
defending their work on XML-dev.  I hope that this is a sign that the
W3C XML activity has opened up a bit in the two or three years since I
left it.  Here's some advice.

To developers:

  Lighten up: W3C committee work truly sucks (more than, say, sitting
  in a dentist's chair), mainly because of all the bureaucratic hoops
  and a tiny ratio of productive to unproductive time.  These guys
  deserve a lot of credit and at least a little respect for sticking
  with it so long.

To W3C committee members:

  Pay close attention: even though the developers sound more like
  paranoid survivalists than rational beings sometimes, they're the
  ones who will decide whether anyone ever cares about the standard
  you've wasted so much of your life working on.  It doesn't matter
  that Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Mrs. Fields' Cookies all sent
  out press releases praising your new Recommendation.  If people like
  the XML devvers don't pick it up, probably no one else will.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson, david@[...].com, http://www.megginson.com/

-----------------------------------------------------------------
The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org> , an
initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> 

The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/

To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>