A Pitch from O'Reilly

Saturday, October 9, 1999 by Dave Winer.

A new ally  

The text of a speech given in Tokyo at LinuxWorld, by Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Associates:

http://xml.com/pub/1999/10/tokyo.html

A quote: "Dave Winer's XML-RPC is a sign of things to come. It's a bad sign that Microsoft knows more about this than the leaders of the Linux community. They've already incorporated it into a new protocol that they are calling SOAP."

Thanks Tim!  

It's great to have someone of O'Reilly's stature in the Unix, open source and scripting worlds, echoing what we've been saying. XML-RPC-based interapplication communication is too big a thing to be just for Microsoft.

UserLand comes from Windows and Mac, the commercial world, with our hands open. To the leaders of the Linux world, help us by competing with us. Our vision is much larger than any single software product. We want to build a new more powerful web out of all kinds of software.

It's frustrating that the Linux world focuses so much on Microsoft, and so little on working with us. The most powerful business model possible is working together. That's the lesson of the web. A link is such a big thing. Now let's make the links work between our software. What a revolution that would be.

Where we go from here  

These days the most exciting stuff in XML-RPC is cross-network applications that run on top of the RPC layer. We've been doing interfaces connecting desktop writing tools to the web, for content syndication, and search engine integration with content management systems. There's a lot more that needs to be done in business-to-business interfaces, calendar applications, electronic mail and conferencing.

The connection between O'Reilly, UserLand and Microsoft is just beginning. When it's done, my goal is that the walls between each of the components of the technology industry will be way down, if not all the way down. I want the energy of the web to flow beteween all our platforms and environments, with the Internet as the transport. Open interfaces and plug-compatibility at an application level. This is bigger than any single operating system or scripting environment, it's nothing less than the next level of the Internet.

Dave Winer  

PS: An important correction. XML-RPC is not mine. It's a spec that was created 1.5 years ago by Don Box of Developmentor, Mohsen Al-Ghosein and Bob Atkinson of Microsoft and myself. But it doesn't belong to any of us, it belongs to the web, in the same way Linux belongs to the web. If I ever had any ownership of XML-RPC I divest of that here and now.