David Megginson (born 1964) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

computer

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

consultant and developer, specializing in

open-source software development Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its sourc ...

and application. He was the lead developer and original maintainer of the

Simple API for XML SAX (Simple API for XML) is an event-driven online algorithm for parsing XML documents, with an API developed by the XML-DEV mailing list. SAX provides a mechanism for reading data from an XML document that is an alternative to that provided by ...

(SAX), a leading streaming

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

for

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

. Megginson has been part of the

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": * Declarative: Markup should des ...

, and then

communities, since 1991. For the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

, he served as chair of the

XML Information Set XML Information Set (XML Infoset) is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of ''information items''. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in ''other'' sp ...

Working Group, and as a member of both the XML Working Group and XML Co-ordination Group. In 2000,

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

and JavaPro magazine awarded Megginson the Java Technology Achievement Award For Outstanding Individual Contribution to the Java Community. He made significant contributions to other

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software projects including

FlightGear ''FlightGear Flight Simulator'' (often shortened to ''FlightGear'' or ''FGFS'') is a free, open source multi-platform flight simulator developed by the project since 1997. David Murr started the project on April 8, 1996. The project had its ...

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software r ...

flight simulator A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they rea ...

making use of XML), the NewsML Toolkit library for NewsML, the XMLWriter libraries for

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

and

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

, RDF Filter, and SGMLSpm (a mid-1990s precursor to many XML functionalities). Megginson is also known for providing the first response to

Andrew S. Tanenbaum Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is the author ...

's "Linux is obsolete."

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

post. His response then evolved into the famous

Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate The Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate was a written debate between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds, regarding the Linux kernel and kernel architecture in general. Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix, began the debate in 1992 on the Usenet discuss ...

. He is an instrument-rated private pilot, and maintains

weblog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s about technology and small-plane

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

. Formerly employed by the

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (french: Université d'Ottawa), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ottawa ...

, he maintains his consulting and development practice in

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Publications

* An advanced guide focusing on XML and SGML

document type definition A document type definition (DTD) is a set of ''markup declarations'' that define a ''document type'' for an SGML-family markup language ( GML, SGML, XML, HTML). A DTD defines the valid building blocks of an XML document. It defines the document ...

s. * A broad exploration of XML applications and standards.

External links

megginson.comQuoderat, Megginson's technology weblogLand and Hold Short, Megginson's aviation weblog"Linux is obsolete." by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
1964 births Living people Canadian computer scientists Computer programmers University of Toronto alumni XML Guild {{Canada-compu-bio-stub