[TriLUG] [OT] W3C and the Promotion of Fee-based Standards for the Web

rpjday rpjday at mindspring.com
Thu Oct 4 06:30:05 EDT 2001


On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, Donald Ball wrote:

> On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, rpjday wrote:
>
> >   the w3c has pretty clearly lost its credibility.  this is not
> > something a simple apology will paper over.  "whoops, sorry, i guess
> > we just didn't think this through enough" ain't gonna cut it.
> > several people have already proposed that any power to dictate
> > web standard be taken away from w3c, since it's clear they don't
> > know how to handle it, and given to some other body, like the IETF.
> > or FSF.  or EFF.  at this point, anyone but w3c.  for that group
> > to claim that they really had no idea what the backlash would be
> > from this is pretty inane.  one can fairly conclude that they're either
> > corrupt or clueless.  in either case, they shouldn't be allowed to
> > play with dangerous toys like world-wide standards.
>
> problem with that is, how do you do it? the w3c more or less made a power
> grab for control of the HTML specification by a dint of hard work,
> self-promotion, name-glitter (tbl), and coercion (how they ever got m$oft
> and netscrape to agree to even pay lip service to their proposals is
> beyond me). and y'know, thank god they did, otherwise we'd be entirely at
> the mercy of whatever browser maker is dominant at the time, instead of at
> least being able to make them look a little bad in public when their
> browsers don't conform to the specifications - specifications they helped
> write.
>
> now you and some other like-minded folks come along and say we're
> unblessing the w3c, we're going to bless Foo instead for the HTML spec.
> how are you going to confer legitimacy to the blessing? how do you coerce
> the browser makers to agree to implement the Foo standards?

apparently, this process is already (theoretically) underway.  a posting
a linuxtoday.com refers to a register article in which bruce perens
talks about (yowch) forking the web to keep royalty-bearing patents
out.

your point is well taken, though.  it's not clear if this is technically
feasible (or financially feasible), but it certainly didn't take long
for the idea to surface.

rday

-- 
Robert P. J. Day
Eno River Technologies, Durham NC
Unix, Linux and Open Source training


Microsoft:  Committed to putting the "backward" into "backward compatibility."




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