SOAPs complexity conspiracy

Brady Forrest on the O´Reilly Radar quotes a Microsoft employee on SOAP in general:

“we want our tools to read it, not people”

I don’t think this is a revelation of sorts. Anyone who’s been involved in the WS-* stack work layered on top of SOAP knows this to be a fact. Check the main application on this stack: Microsoft’s CardSpace (Microsoft’s implementation of InfoCards). A wonder of ambition, this application is basically an application of WS-Trust, WS-Security, and WS-Security Policy. Each of these standards are equally wondrous in their complexity.

Who’s to blame? IBM and Microsoft for pushing standards that are so complex to implement that no-one is going to risk any business to non-IBM or non-Microsoft implementations, because it’s just too impossible to implement correctly? And that’s how you sell big boxes.

Or are the co-authors to blame? The co-authors to these specifications who follow suit and agree to these mountains of indecipherable standards, just to bask in the perceived glory of being part of the Big Club with IBM and Microsoft?

Maybe both?