Yes.
> If developers could maintain XSA documents that listed these things anyone
> who was interested could poll them for changes at intervals and discover
> these things automatically. Today most software list maintainers simply
> don't even try to keep their coverage up to date and instead rely on
> developers to do it for them. The developers usually have their products
> listed in too many places for this to be feasible, hence XSA.
Linux developers (especially those using RedHat Package Manager, which -
side note to Tim - is one of the finest pieces of software for configuration
management I've ever worked with) have something like this already, though
not markup-language-based, called the Linux Software Map.
http://www.linux.org/apps/lsm.html
http://www.ExecPC.com/lsm/
Every piece of software produced for (or ported to) Linux is expected to
have a .lsm file included in its distribution. The format of the document
is simple, and described in this readme:
ftp://ftp.execpc.com/pub/lsm/LSM.README
I think this would make an excellent foundation for an XML application.
It might be useful to look at this as well as the IAFA format also
described the the above readme.
S
(my opinions only, not those of the WSP :) Heh.
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