| Like Linux and Gnome, XML has a political agenda: freedom from
vendor control. - (1996) We knew that HTML could not support data exchange in
general
- Without XML, HTML would have been replaced with a binary,
proprietary format controlled by a single vendor
- The alternative was SGML (international, open, text-based
standard, ISO 8879-1986)
- XML put SGML on the Web. Result:
- Users can define their own data exchange standards
- There are many inexpensive, robust tools
- Data belongs to the people who create it rather than to
the software vendors
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