Arved Sandstrom wrote at 14 Dec 2002 15:05:05 -0400: > No bitterness at all, actually, Peter. It takes a bit of wind out of my > sails, sure, since xmlroff is so similar to the project that Eric Bischoff > and myself were working on. Tony has certainly been aware of that for quite > a long time - I don't understand why the secrecy, myself, seeing as how we > are now looking at an OSS donation anyway.
Sun policy, not personal policy. I assure you that there are many steps, and many signatures, required when a large corporation makes an open source donation. Purely because it is a large corporation making the donation and not an individual contributor, there is a lot of "due diligence" to be done. If a project can't pass all the criteria, it won't be made public. Since a project intended for open souce may not make it to open source, it is perhaps better to say nothing until the due diligence is completed (or, in this case, very nearly completed). The alternative -- announcing an intention to make a public source donation -- risks the project not passing the criteria and risks later accusations of vapourware or accusations of lack of commitment to open source when the project can't be made public. That's why I couldn't say anything about the formatter in the lead up to XML 2002: any of a number of people -- not just engineers and engineering managers -- could have vetoed the donation for any of a number of reasons, and I would have just had to withdraw from the conference without another word being said. > I'd be bitter if I were so arrogant as to think of myself as being upstaged. > :-) That's not the case. I am quite familiar with the spec, and there are > now a number of competing efforts. None of which are quite accurate. So > there is room for more competition. Alternatively, I may talk to Tony and > Eric and see if we can assist. Part of why it is written in C is so it doesn't compete with FOP for developers. Arved took the wind out of my sails for a while when he announced his SourceForge project, so wind taking runs both ways. I would be pleased if Arved and/or Eric would consider assisting with the project. Frankly, I would be pleased if *anybody* assisted with the project, but Arved and Eric would be a bonus. Regards, Tony Graham ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XML Technology Center - Dublin Sun Microsystems Ireland Ltd Phone: +353 1 8199708 Hamilton House, East Point Business Park, Dublin 3 x(70)19708 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]