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I seem to be come up with the most quoteable turns of phrase when I'm being the least rational and attentive to detail. For the record, I believe that the XML *superstructure* -- schemas, different conceptions of namespaces,infosets, datatypes, committee-defined formalisms being defined by a number of groups at the W3C -- will NOT survive the evolutionary pressures of the real world. The *infrastructure* of XML -- the Common XML subset of XML 1.0, the parts of the DOM API that expose Common XML, the ideas that are common to the W3C Schema, RELAX, and TREX -- is as solid as almost anything in the software industry.
The solid ideas at the core will survive even if the W3C loses credibility as a "standards" body, if much-hyped ideas such as the semantic web or web services fail to pay off, etc. Probably the worst that could happen after "XML" writ large is whacked is something like the Unix world in the late '80's/early '90's: everyone more or less agrees on some core concepts but "embraces and extends" them in a confusing, but more or less workable way.
We can do a whole lot better than that ... maybe something like the XML equivalent of Linux will come along to re-unite everything in a single vision and re-ignite the energy ... but that's not the current trend.
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