Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?

On 27/01/2013 08:09, James Fuller wrote:
> Hello Roger,
>
> Yes I see your situation ... when non techies are confronted by
> choosing between XYZ technology and one has a cost and another
> apparently has no cost ... they classically drift towards the zero
> cost solution. I sometimes wonder how much 'impl' detail to give to
> people making cost decisions ... e.g. there is always a cost
> associated with adopting any software.
Indeed this is true, and not just for non-techies. My business is 
essentially built on providing a zero-cost technology that people can 
use successfully to build some pretty significant systems, and then when 
they can see they are getting value from it, providing extra things they 
can buy to stretch its capability a little further (*). It's much easier 
to justify spending a couple of thousand at that point in the cycle than 
at the point where you are deciding what programming language to use, 
and the net effect is that 90% of the user base are getting a free lunch 
because the free stuff meets their requirements adequately.
Inevitably, though, the further we go down the track in developing the 
standards and the implementations, the more we are catering for the 
minority who need more than the current baseline offers. Generally, when 
we add small usability improvements to the language, users will thank us 
but will not reach for their wallets. When we add major features like 
streaming or packaging, we're catering for a small minority of the user 
base, but the users who need it need it badly enough to be prepared to 
invest. If this means that the new versions of the standards will have 
slow uptake because most people don't need them enough to fork out for 
them, that doesn't worry me greatly, so long as the minority who do need 
the new features generate enough revenue to recoup the (substantial) 
investment.
The investment has to come from somewhere. It's past the stage where it 
can come from hobbyists (look at the attempts to create a 2.0 version of 
libxslt). There are limited opportunities for using the software as a 
lost leader to get revenue from hardware or from services. To me, the 
most natural and simplest business model is that the investment comes 
from the people who are getting most value from using the technology.
There is another problem, of course: W3C process requires that you can't 
create a Recommendation without having two independent implementations. 
There have been plenty of programming languages that became hugely 
successful despite only having one implementation; and with a mature 
language, many implementors want to hold back until there is a 
Recommendation. So this process could yet prove an obstacle, or at any 
rate a delaying factor. But we're more likely to get multiple 
implementations if implementors see some prospect of revenue.
(*) I think that accurately describes the average buyer. There's another 
class of buyer who takes the commercial product because they don't trust 
open source, but I think they're in a minority these days.
Michael Kay
Saxonica

--~------------------------------------------------------------------
XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
To unsubscribe, go to: http://lists.mulberrytech.com/xsl-list/
or e-mail: <mailto:xsl-list-unsubscribe(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
--~--