Concerning XUL...

Marc Clifton wrote:
> 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.

    I think the case is actually the opposite: XUL is non-proprietary 
but not open. XUL, as a whole, is not open documentation-wise because 
it's not fully documented. However, since anyone can create a forked 
open source project based on Mozilla that supports XUL, and since the 
Mozilla Foundation is not opposed to other implementations of XUL, I 
fail to see how XUL is proprietary.

    It can be argued that a subset of XUL is open, which was the whole 
idea behind my XUL Basic concept. A functional subset of XUL, containing 
the most common markup, could be standardized to allow others to create 
products whose content would be compatible with XUL.

> 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.

    Agreed. Because Mozilla is open source, it's only as controlled as 
the community allows. Just look at XFree86 and X.org.

> As to XML languages, in my opinion XAML is an XML language.

    Yeah, I don't know where Ian was getting that from. He could have 
been referring to Avalon, though, which is simply an API.

> 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?

    What I think he means is that it's designed for HTML, not for XML. 
It   has an XHTML module, but that doesn't make it XML-based any more 
than XHTML makes HTML XML-based.

    Personally, I don't consider it a LANGUAGE. It's a proposed 
extension to a language (HTML).


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