Jonathan,
I actually agree with the substance of most of your latest remarks; but I
feel a need to restore some balance, and to set the record straight on one
point--
At 01:58 PM 6/28/2003, you wrote:
I think the above surprising facts go a long way towards explaining why
Mulberrytech, for example, is able to have a viable business training
people to use XSLT, and does not offer equivalent training in teaching
toddlers how to walk.
But we don't "have a viable business training people to use XSLT" --
rather, we have a viable business providing a wide variety of XML- (and
SGML-) related services. XSLT is part of the mix, but if that was our only
business we'd have been out on the street long ago. A business built on the
premise that XSLT is impossibly hard to learn on your own is not viable,
IMHO. Someone would invent that walker or training wheels or whatever and
then we'd be out in the cold.
(On the contrary: we work on the premise that the emerging technologies are
creating new markets, that these markets will be healthiest if they are
relatively free of "dependency" relations ("co-dependency" relations?)
between vendors and customers (i.e. "lock-in"), and that this will be good
for everyone involved. This implies that the core technologies must be, and
will be, open and freely available -- and learnable even without a big budget.)
Finally, I should insist that while XSLT and even XSLT-alternatives (at
least to the extent of becoming aware of their existence) are in scope for
this list, Mulberry's business model really is not. I address it only in
the hope of correcting any misapprehensions out there.
But thanks nonetheless,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
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