Re: WHAT WG Spokesman Declares Mozilla XUL a proprietary language - Comments?

I guess we have different understandings of the term "open". For
example, by your definition, .NET is "open" because Microsoft provides
the runtime for free. I'm not even sure what "open" means in this
context. How is it "open"? As to proprietary, I don't understand how
you're using this term either. Proprietary to me means that the
internal workings, architecture, and specifications are private--the
public doesn't have access to them. I don't see what proprietary has
to do with something being a standard or not.

By these definitions, when you say XUL is an open, proprietary product,
it seems like you mean it's a free, non-standard, architectural and
implementation closed, single vendor controlled runtime. How is it
different from Microsoft's XAML in that sense? So, in fact, XUL is
JUST LIKE any other independent, proprietary XML language. I certainly
don't see the difference, based on your definitions. No wonder you
have problems saying anything else in that section. It's because, in
fact, there is no difference. Claiming there is, is indefensible!

How you use the terms "controlled by a single vendor" and "community"
in the same sentence is beyond me. "Controlled" means, well,
controlled--the vendor makes the final decisions. OK, maybe there's a
community of people that make suggestions, but come on, if it's
controlled, then someone is doing the controlling.

As to time being better spent working on XUL, some of the reason people
make competing products is that they don't like the decisions that are
made by the people in control, they see market opportunities that are
being missed, and most importantly, they feel that they can make a
better product that will suite people's needs better.

As to XML languages, in my opinion XAML is an XML language. Avalon
implements specific parsers which are reflected (as in a mirror, not
C#/Java "reflection") in the XML syntax. In another posting, you said
"Web Apps 1.0 isn't an XML language, it's HTML-based." Erm, am I
missing something here? Isn't HTML and XML language? If you're
HTML-based, aren't you by its very nature also an XML Language?

Marc

Ian Hickson wrote:

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Gerald Bauer wrote:

Ian "Hixie" Hickson claimed a while ago here on xul-talk that Mozilla
XUL is an open standard and language and because Mozilla's code base is
open source there's no need whatsoever for any competition or
independent Mozilla XUL compatible code base or initiatives such as the
Open XUL Alliance.

You are (again) wildly misunderstanding what I've tried to explain.

XUL is open, in that the runtime is free software.

XUL doesn't _need_ competition, in that any efforts made by people working
on a competing product could be put to better use simply making the
existing XUL runtime better.

XUL is proprietary, in that it isn't a standard, and is controlled by a
single vendor, namely the Mozilla community.

| This specification is independent of the various proprietary UI
| languages that various vendors provide.

PS: I guess Ian cansomehow not bring himself to write XML UI languages
instead of UI languages.

I once again ask you, what has XML got to do with anything?

Avalon isn't an XML language, Flash isn't an XML language, Z isn't an XML
language, and so on and so forth. Why would I limit my statement to XML
languages? Doing so would be silly.

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