Stardate 20010616.1220 (On Screen): I suppose it helps to have the perspective of time. Over the course of my career, I've seen various fads in computer software come along, and there is always a hard core of believers who state, first, that they are applicable to every problem, and second, that they are revolutionary. Sometimes they're useful and sometimes not, but in my entire career I've only seen one which actually was revolutionary, and that one dates from about 1958. (Block structured programming, in case you're interested; the revolution was the development of the ALGOL language, from which C, Pascal, C++, Java and numerous other modern languages ultimately descend.) Most turn out to be flashes in the pan. Among them: object oriented design, the APL language, the LISP language, the SNOBOL language, the JAVA language, the "chief programmer team", "extreme programming", and many, many others. A current one which is following this classic pattern is "open source"; if it follows the standard life cycle its real value and its limits should become clear within five more years. Part of the problem is that there's nearly always a germ of truth in these extravagant claims; it's not that these techniques are completely useless, only that they're nothing like as broadly applicable as their true believers would like to think. (There have been a few which were totally useless, like "proving code". But usually there is some validity to the claims.)
According to this article, XML has now attained this same status as a religious icon among some people. This article describes some aspects of the XML meta-language, ascribed to it by its true believers and by outsiders with agendas, which aren't really present. What it fails to mention but which needs to be brought up is that XML doesn't circumvent the copyright laws. The mere fact that material is encoded in XML doesn't mean that its author has yielded all copyright. Yet there are people out there who seem to be making that assumption, and I've already seen complaints about cases where someone's material created with certain tools which are XML-compliant has been taken and redistributed without permission.
It doesn't work that way. The fact that an "open" and "free" standard is used to encapsulate content doesn't mean that the content itself becomes "open" and "free". USS Clueless is not encoded using XML, but it is encoded with the English Language, which is both "open" and "free", and communicated using ASCII and HTML, which are also "open" and "free". Yet all material on this page is covered by copyright. According to the Berne convention, copyright is automatic even without formal notification, and waiver of copyright must be explicit and formal. (discuss)
