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RE: Is W3C Losing the Plot?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Is W3C Losing the Plot?
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 20:45:42 -0400
• In-reply-to: <t910nucjdr6f6cgqvkdsmds08a1dkvgnlf@4...>

 "Didier PH Martin" <martind@n...> sayeth:

> Writing about the XML technologies as
> proposed by W3C start to resemble to a tabloid. So, we are not pressing
> the panic button but we are just saying: Can you say something coherent
> guys?

> Sooner or later, children have to leave the playground to come back to
> classes :-) It just seems that the class has no teacher and the children
> have no common principles :-)

My records show that I have not delivered Canonical Sermon on the W3C #1
for awhile <grin> so here goes:

The W3C is a consortium of competitors trying to minimize the 
gratuitous differences among their products, not a collective of
noble-minded theoreticians striving to do good for humanity.
It's unfair to the W3C to hold them to a higher standard (although
I admit  that certain pronouncements from upon high do sound
a bit like they aspire to universal truth).

At BEST this results in collective design, that is, smart and
honorable people putting their ideas together and exchanging 
insights from their collective experience to produce something
that more or less meets most people's needs.  There AIN'T NO WAY
it can result in elegant, consistent, minimalist designs.
Fuggidaboudit!  No Way!  Won't happen, don't expect it to, and
don't complain when it doesn't happen.  It's like democracy, 
"the worst of all possible systems ... except for the alternatives."
[OK, there may be better alternatives, and IETF, ISO, OASIS,
WS-I, etc. may move into the W3C's niche, but they would still
be saddled with the same fundamental constraints that prevent
elegant, consistent, minimalist specs.]

The old saw about "a camel is a horse designed by a committee"
comes to mind.  These specs are doomed to be ugly creatures.
The only way to clean them up is for someone (and I probably mean
some ONE person) to come along behind and sort it all out, develop
an elegant approach that covers 80% or so of the totality, and
promote the new model when the old one gets too trailworn to be 
suitable any more.

But do keep in mind that a camel is a far more suitable beast to
take along on a journey through uncharted wilderness than is a horse.

• References:
  • Re: Byzantine schism
    • From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>

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