Hi Mike,

While I do not argue with your example for "subscribe" (as we know it today), I do not equate the following excerpt from the white paper to be the same:
"...With the option of subscribing to these core Microsoft .NET services off the shelf, developers can make a "buy or build" decision as to where they want to spend their development resources".

In addition, the link Marcel provided has the following quote (under the Web Services heading):
"...No longer will you buy a component. You'll subscribe to it instead! That way, upgrades are immediate and automatic.".


Finally, in a newspaper article in today's Toronto Star (Steve Ballmer was in town and gave a keynote) reporting on his speech:
"Used this way, software becomes a service, with software companies increasingly becoming application service providers (ASPs) that let customers access the most up-to-date versions of their programs over the web.".
NOTE: That is NOT a statement by Mr. Ballmer, but of the author of the article.

Basically I see a possible significantly different reading of the white paper than you (and others, seemingly) do.

For instance, I feel that it could be read as MS itself will become the world-wide repository of DATA that people want/need to exploit .NET. As such MS would take primary responsibility for storage/retrieval, security, performance, etc. etc. It is also possible that XML will be the only "programming" to be done regarding the .NET services (yes, I understand that BASIC or script can be included in XML).
This may sound far-fetched, but on reading "The New New Thing" it is apparent to me that Jim Clark conceived "Healtheon" (now WebMD) to be similar for the medical industry. His plan is (was?) to become the hub for all of the different medical services like insurance admin, hospital admin, drug/prescription, patient admin etc.

Regards,

Jim N


>>I also see heavy use of the word "subscribe", making me wonder if this is more
>>towards time-based software "licensing" (my terminology for downloading a
>>product for use then it disappearing from your system when you close it) as
>>opposed to permanently installed on your computer.
>
>Umm, not quite. When hearing the two words "subscriber" and "publisher", think "client" and "server". It's not a direct analogy, that's why we have new terms. Here's one example: suppose you run a company that provides stock quotes. You provide your customers a COM+ (er, sorry, .NET) client that is the "subscriber" (keep in mind, this subscription service could very well be free; "subscribe" does not necessarily mean money changes hands). On the server, you have a "publisher". This publisher fires off a COM+ event every so often that says, "hey, new stock price is available!". From there, we get into Loosely Coupled Events (LCE) and Tightly Coupled Events (TCE). The main difference there is that with TCE, the subscriber has to be active. With LCE, the subscriber doesn't have to be active until the event fires. Markus had a good article in last month's CoDe magazine dealing with the subject.
>
>>It looks like a whole new world to me, with XML being the main "glue" and
>>canned "building blocks" used for processing. Maybe real programming is to
>>join the dodo after all.
>
>I've been hearing that ever since VB came out. ;-)