Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?
2013-01-27 03:57:05
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
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- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, (continued)
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Liam R E Quin
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, davep
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Michael Kay
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Wolfgang Laun
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, James Fuller
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Michael Kay
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?,
Michael Kay <=
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Adam Retter
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Emmanuel Bégué
- Re: [xsl] Are there any free, fully-compliant XSLT/XPath 3.0 processors?, Adam Retter
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