Success Breeds Responsibility.
Michael Rys has returned from the XML Technical Plenary where he participated in a panel about the future of XML. It sounds like it was a rather lively discussion! One point that Michael talks about that really rings a bell for me was three simple words -- “Success breeds responsibility.”
Michael framed that in the context of technologies like Binary XML. I think he rightly points that this are potentially fracture points for XML's most useful aspects -- anonymous ubquity. While I really do like the concept compacting payloads in the ways that a binary encoding can, its equally as important to for those folks working on such a standard to keep in mind that there's a fine balance between a “one size fits many” and “one size fits some” standard. Hopefully they will come with something that's both easy to universally implement and allows for domain-specific application application flexibility. Then its a win-win.
But the concept of success breeds responsibility goes beyond just XML or even technology in general. Theres a personal lesson in it for me, and its one I hope to get to blog about later this week.