JSON is a data interchange format specified by Douglas Crockford, an alternative to XML. So, it seems to me that it's useful to know his point of view about SGML syntax compared to Scrib. Remain to know if the Web would have been different from that which we know if TBL had chosen Scrib instead of SGML for HTML syntax.

"...In March 2008, his AJAXWorld Keynote will be titled 'Can We Fix the Web?' and it will focus on how the current Web is, as Crockford puts it, «overly complex and visually underpowered.» «"It is hopelessly insecure. It is now under competitive assault by new proprietary platforms that hope to capture the next generation of applications. Can a system as large and as open as the web heal and adapt itself to the challenges of the 21st Century?» ..."

"I do not claim to have invented JSON. I claim only that I discovered it. It existed in nature. I identified it, gave it a name, and showed how it was useful..."

If you ask for the languages of the moment, you will hear people talk about Ruby, C#, JavaScript, Erlang, Python or even Haskell. You probably won't hear Perl mentioned. Perl's current standing is like that of JavaScript a few years ago.

Thomas Lord: «...The more urgent issue concerns the emerging W3C-based world: what will GNU have to offer there?» --
Miles Bader: «Hopefully, an alternative...» --

Free and open source software is all about sharing so, prompted by a reader who emailed me last week to ask about books on Linux, I spent some time over the weekend doing research. The result is a short list of books that users - from newbies to gurus - can download and read at their leisure.

A couple of days ago we included a link to this exploration of Douglas Goodyear and that connection to Microsoft. We have also been exploring Microsoft’s use of the United States government to push software patents into the European Union.

Really I guess Linus doesn't see the Linux development model as being very unique in the open source world, even though it is. Or maybe Linus is a bit like the Douglas Adam character who considers his house the "outside of the insane asylum" and the rest of the world the "insane asylum" - we're all just crazy.

Douglas Karr at the Marketing Technology Blog decided to survey the Web sites of Presidential candidates, finding out what software they were running and where they were hosted. It’s curious that open source dominates among Democrats, with only Hillary Clinton crossing the aisle to run Windows. Four Republicans