This is simply bullshit. While a lot of the SGML priesthood is/was
hard to deal with, the arrogance, and almost total lack of
interest on behalf of the WWW folk also caused a lot of problems.
Many people on this list lived through all of this. I remember a great
deal of arrogance on both sides (hey I was one of them too).
You should remember that people like Jon Bosak, Steve DeRose,
Sharon Adler, MSPMcQ, myself, and many, many other people, come
from the SGML camp, and *today* are finally helping to usher in the
technologies we desired.
FWIW. I have seen people with large SGML *repositories* but many
people use/used SGML as an interchange format, or at the
end of the publishing process. Funny, but that seems to be the
role that XML is taking.
Those with large SGML repositories usually have them due to
regulations (for example, the DoD etc.)