[vos-d] How to host a product design dinner party

[Len Bullard]

Yowsa.

In ecosystems, niches aren't a bad thing.  They are the only thing.  An
ecosystem with only one application is just a very large and probably doomed
niche.  XML is dumb in some ways, but very reapplicable so it thrives.  HTML
is a box-display and that is the most common means of working with the page
metaphor, so it thrives.  VRML/X3D is a scene graph and that can be slow,
but like the page metaphor, it is reapplicable to many tasks so it never
dies. 

The urge to focus on one single application is normal, but if you are
building a toolkit such as VOS, it would be deadly.  You're doing the right
thing, but it violates two of the web myths: easy and simple.  Simplistic
analogies will sell it perhaps, but don't get trapped by your own press.
VOS won't be a tool everyone can use.  The niche that can can do a lot with
it.  I think that is Reed's point, yes?

len

From: vos-d-bounces at interreality.org [mailto:vos-d-bounces at interreality.org]
On Behalf Of Peter Amstutz
 
Well, I guess you proved Reed's point by misinterpreting the analogy...  
The point isn't really about XML per se, it's that the acceptance of XML 
has created an ecosystem of tools that operate on generic XML, which 
means applications using XML can leverage those tools.  We're proposing 
something similar in spirit, that a flexible runtime system can support 
the development of an ecosystem of applications that work together and 
are more powerful than the sum of their parts.

Otherwise I agree, documents are not code, and there's an ocean of 
difference between the essentially context-free, declarative nature of 
documents and the essentially stateful, imperative nature of code.