In an unusual anonymous posting to XML-DEV, "Pope32767" claims that "the mind virus that has infected the W3C's XML Activity is all about what namespaces mean when they are not regular URLs"

While the mysterious Pope32767 said:

"I realize this means muck raking journalists may get a hold of it and run scare headlines like "XML Doomed!" or something stupid like that, I can't help it. Somehow XML Activity has to **** or get off the pot."

they claimed:

"The Namespaces Reccommendation said that two namespaces were the same if they matched exactly char-by-char. (The attribute values not the prefixes, that is). It also said that they were URI references. Those two ideas conflict because the same-looking relative URL means different things depending on what document it's in, but strings are strings no matter what the context is."

and further,

"The XML Plenary is supposed to clean up messes like this. However there is no consensus anywhere with maybe half the people who take any one position finding all the other positions absolutely intolerable. [....] TimBL who is SUPPOSED to be the final authority has said that he is not going to decide so that he can make his input just like any other W3C member."