We are getting very close to a Semantic Web watershed moment (IMHO). Thus, for the purpose of historic record, I would like to create a public bookmark to Tim Bray's 2003 post titled: RDF.net Challenge that also contains a nice section about the History of RDF.

Note to Tim:

Is the RDF.net domain deal still on? I know it's past 1st Jan 2006, but do bear in mind that the critical issue of a broadly supported RDF Query Language only took significant shape approximately 13 months ago (in the form of SPARQL), and this is all so critical to the challenge you posed in 2003.

RDF.net could become a point of semantic-web-presence through which the benefits of SPARQL compliant Triple|Quad Stores, Shared Ontologies, and SPARQL Protocol are unveiled in their well intended glory :-).