I see, the interoperability issue makes sense, and now I'm starting to remember it. (I never did THAT much with SOAP).
But you really think the specs-writers (being some of the same people as the tool-makers?) intentionally made the specs overly-verbose and burdensome to implement, to protect their tools businesses? That's different from what you said in your original comment, about spec-makers "believing toolmakers were on their side" -- now you're saying the spec-makers were the tool-makers and not actually on the end-developer-user's side!
I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem, rather than intentionally sabotaging it for profit. But you think I'm too optimistic?
It really depends on your view of W3C as a standard body.
> That's different from what you said in your original comment
SOAP basically started as an attempt to learn from the mistakes of CORBA and RPC, and I think it started with good intentions all around. When complexity hit, however, the original designers basically went "we'll deal with it in the various sub-specs, but don't worry, tooling will take care of this anyway". I do think most of them were not malicious in this approach. Meanwhile, vendors understood where the wind was blowing, and got themselves heavily involved in the various efforts - hence the proliferation of WS-* and incompatibilities.
> I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem
Considering the amount of money and manpower that went into these efforts, ascribing it all to lack of skills would possibly end up being less optimistic - about the state of corporations, the work they produce, and what this means for human progress.
TBH I think the charitable reading is just that there were too many cooks in the WS kitchen. I feel some of them burnt pans on purpose, maybe they didn't, but at this point it doesn't matter much.
But you really think the specs-writers (being some of the same people as the tool-makers?) intentionally made the specs overly-verbose and burdensome to implement, to protect their tools businesses? That's different from what you said in your original comment, about spec-makers "believing toolmakers were on their side" -- now you're saying the spec-makers were the tool-makers and not actually on the end-developer-user's side!
I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem, rather than intentionally sabotaging it for profit. But you think I'm too optimistic?