[ Thanks to S.Ramaswamy for this link.
]
“We already have first-generation Web services; they’re
powerful; the flip side of powerful is dangerous. CGI security
holes have wrought at least as much havoc as have VBA holes, but
few would have shunned the first-generation Web until “that CGI
security hole” got plugged. There’s no going back. We’re going to
have next-generation Web services, and we’re going to have to learn
— probably the hard way — how to control them.”
“To a large extent it is Microsoft that has pioneered the modern
conception of reusable binary packages of software. And, more
generally, the notion of software development as a two-tiered
affair involving components and glue, created respectively by
component-builders and component-assemblers. This whole model is
now transplanting itself to the Net. Microsoft gets this better
than many in the open source community. Significantly, it’s
Microsoft that’s been the real force behind SOAP.”
“There’s no reason why the open source world can’t make all the
necessary client-side magic happen in terms of open, interoperable
standards. But that won’t just happen by itself. There needs to be,
on the part of the Linux, Java, and Mozilla forces, a clear and
consciously articulated vision and road map. To me, that’s the
ultimate open source challenge: reaching consensus, and turning
ideas into marching orders, without a single “chief software
architect” such as Gates. Non-interoperability isn’t a luxury
Microsoft can any longer afford, when it’s clear what it must
interoperate with. Defining just what that will be is the OSS
challenge. Leave a vacuum, and Microsoft will fill it…”