Mozilla Guy On XAML vs XUL

Hello,

   Gervase Markham (a Mozilla employee) writes in the blog story titled "XAML and XUL":

   I just attended sequential talks on XAML (from Rob Relyea of Microsoft) and XUL (from 
Ben Goodger, Firefox Lead Developer) at the XTech conference. One could argue about 
whether and how these technologies are in competition, but what struck me most were the 
differences in focus, approach and design philosophy, which I would summarise as 
exclusivity vs. inclusivity.

Portability. The motivation behind XAML seems to be to make it easy to write Windows 
applications, or web applications in IE. The motivation behind XUL was to provide a first 
class UI on every platform without having to do the work multiple times - i.e. "we want to 
be inclusive; let's work out how we can do that".

Localisation. The XUL system is designed to be very easy to localise, and Ben made a point 
of mentioning it. Firefox 1.0 is available in 40 languages, localised entirely by volunteers. 
No mention was made of localisation in the XAML presentation.

Licensing. The XAML presenter dodged the question of whether Free software 
implementations of XAML are possible. The reference XUL implementation is available to 
all under a Free licence, the standard (as far as it's documented) is open, and the authors 
neither hold nor would enforce patents on it.

Of course, having only heard 45 minutes on XAML, I could be mistaken in some of my 
understanding. Alternative views or corrections welcome.

   Source: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/008211.html

   Any comments? Any thoughts?