[Python-Dev] Leading with XML-RPC

[Eric S. Raymond]

I just got off the phone with Dave Winer, the designer of the Frontier 
scripting language.  Dave is concerned that the open-source
community's response to Microsoft's .NET and and Hailstorm proposals
isn't active enough; he views Miguel de Icaza's MONO proposal as good
thing but essentially playing catch-up with a Microsoft-defined
standard.  

Dave suggests that the open-source community can turn up the heat on
Microsoft by visibly supporting and promoting open RPC standards that
compete with .NET, such as XML-RPC and SOAP 1.1.  He thinks that the
implementors of scripting languages like Perl and Python are in a
particularly good position to make this happen, by making XML-RPC
and/or SOAP 1.1 fully documented parts of their standard libraries.  

I agree with both parts of Dave's assessment, and am willing to put my
own effort into making it happen by doing some of the integration work.

Therefore the concrete proposal: we should make XML-RPC support in the
Python standard library a goal for 2.2.  I'd like to see votes and/or
a BDFL pronouncement on this goal.

I've copied Fredrik Lundh and Eric Kidd, the implementors of two
XML-RPC implementations that might serve.  Dave (who designed XML-RPC)
likes them both.  I hope they'll report on which, if either, they
consider production-ready for integration with Python.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their
will to power.
	-- Aldous Huxley