W3C XML 10 Years

Ten years ago, on 10 February 1998, W3C published the "Extensible Markup
Language (XML) 1.0" specification as a W3C Recommendation. W3C is marking
the ten-year anniversary of XML by celebrating "XML10" and extending
thanks to the dedicated communities -- including people who have
participated in W3C's XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community,
and xml-dev -- whose efforts have created a successful family of
technologies based on the solid XML 1.0 foundation. The success of XML
is a strong indicator of how dedicated individuals, working within the
W3C Process, can engage with a larger community to produce industry-changing
results. "Today we celebrate the success of open standards in preserving
Web data from proprietary ownership," said Jon Bosak, who led the W3C
Working Group that produced XML 1.0. Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems:
"There is essentially no computer in the world, desk-top, hand-held, or
back-room, that doesn't process XML sometimes. This is a good thing,
because it shows that information can be packaged and transmitted and used
in a way that's independent of the kinds of computer and software that
are involved. XML won't be the last neutral information-wrapping system;
but as the first, it's done very well." Indeed, one can hardly get through
the day without using technology that is based on XML in some fashion.
When you fill your auto tank with gas, XML often flows from pump to
station. When you configure your digital camera, on some models you do
so via XML-based graphical controls. When you plug it into a computer,
the camera and the operating system communicate with each other in XML.
When you download digital music, the software you use to organize it is
likely to store information about songs as XML. And when you explore
the planet Mars, XML goes with you... W3C would like to extend
congratulations to the participants of the XML Working Group that created
the standard: Jon Bosak, Paula Angerstein, Tim Bray (co-Editor), James
Clark, Dan Connolly, Steve DeRose, Dave Hollander, Eliot Kimber, Tom
Magliery, Eve Maler, Murray Maloney, Makoto Murata, Joel Nava, Conleth
O'Connell, Jean Paoli (co-Editor), Peter Sharpe, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
(co-Editor), and John Tigue.