From: Adam L. Beberg (beberg@mithral.com)
Date: Thu May 18 2000 - 20:38:02 PDT
On Thu, 18 May 2000, Kragen Sitaker wrote:
> > Simple, you can't patent or otherwise control binary protocols. Same old
> > stupid story as WAP, patent, patent, patent. I'm sure I've just violated
> > at least 37 laws even talking about it without 3 lawyers present.
>
> There are a couple of problems with this suggestion; one is that WAP
> (patent, patent, patent) consists of binary protocols, and another is
> that Dave Winer, who originated the XML-RPC protocol that SOAP evolved
> from, is fervently anti-software-patent.
My appologies for the ambiguity. WAP is definately not binary, i was
comparing WAP to SOAP, and design goals aimed at the 37 lawyers and a
"standard" rather then the millions of users. And I'm aware Dave is on
our side :) Maybe I just cut & snip'ed too much text there. It's
really agrivating to see people jumping on a patented bandwagon, why
else would someone come up with something so obviously not efficient.
> It also doesn't make sense, for the reasons described above.
fixed ;)
> > Binary protocols are smaller, faster, language-independant,
> > unpatentable, and free.
>
> "smaller": yes, the data is smaller. The implementation is much larger.
Reading a 37 byte network stream into a struct/memory-block and fixing
the endian is VASTLY less code then an XML parser.
> "unpatentable": you must know something about patent law I don't :)
I can do anything I want with my 1's and 0's since it's been > 17 years
since they were discovered. The lawyers can take their 100101 and
shove it you know where.s
XML is about 37 times faster for the GNUites to reverse engineer, so
maybe XML is good... hmmm... wait a minute... I think I like Microsoft
using as much XML as possible...
P.S. 37 is prime, like most all holy/powerful numbers, that's why...
- Adam L. Beberg
Mithral Communications & Design, Inc.
The Cosm Project - http://cosm.mithral.com/
beberg@mithral.com - http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/
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