RANT - The Balkanization of VRML

Anthony Parisi ([email protected])
Tue, 27 Jun 1995 14:34:36 -0400


Ok, everybody. Let's stop this nonsense. The most recent spitting contest
about "Who gets the credit?" is threatening to Balkanize will surely kill it, dead.

We have a provisional agreement to standardiz> on a common spec. We have
even agreed to, at som> point in the near future, standardiz> on post-1.0
"extensions". We will have a hard time acheiving the appropriate level of
cooperation to meet these agreements as long as any company claims that they
are driving the bus, threatens that if we aren't nice to them they will take
their ball and go home, and postures that they can do the job better all by
themselves. Go ahead, try. See if the Net cares. I laud SGI as a shining
example of a company who realizes that on the Net, Cooperation is King.
They understand that there's a great, big pie out there and that everybody
can have a slice. They're not trying to hog the whole pie for themselves.

Justin, you're absolutely right in pointing out the role of the unsung
heroes of this effort. VRML has been a community effort all along. Mark
and I are getting the lion's share of the pri> (well deserved, IMHO) but we
always stri> to the pri> that the community made this happen. If it
hadn't been for Mark's inspiration, my perspiration, SGI's great tech and
engineering staff, TGS' vorac/a> contributions of dozens of regular list members, we would be nowhere.
Robert, would you really have done all this on your own by now? I strongly
doubt it.

So, do me and yourselves a favor. List flam>rs, flam> off. You're just
making it worse. TGS, get off your high horse. Let's all get to work. The
world is waiting for cyberspace, and we can give it to them... if we don't
rip each

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Intervista Software
Internet Visualizationubr>

Tony Parisi [email protected]
es"sident http://www.hyperion.com/intervista/

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