[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Offtopic: Web Standards Project
[NOTE: The following is mostly an incoherent rant that is only marginally connected to the WSP. Consider it a potential source of comedy relief--no offence is meant to the WSP or its members--WEK.] At 11:08 PM 8/7/98 -0400, Frank Boumphrey wrote: >Tim, > >why did'nt you tell us about this. > >We should all support it. > >http://www.webstandards.org This looks interesting, and the list of names involved is certainly impressive, so I take it as a given that there is something significant here, but I'm wondering just exactly *what* the WSP can actually do to achieve its mission. Here's what I took to be the relevant info from the mission statement on the subject Web site: "Our goal is to support these core standards and encourage browser makers to do the same, thereby ensuring simple, affordable access to Web technologies for all." Realizing that the Web site claims it's not officially open until Monday (10 Aug 1998), I find it odd that there's nothing about *how* this organization (or any similar organization) can actually meet this goal. What power or authority would the WSP (or any similar group) have that the W3C, as the authority that issues the "standards", does not have? [The W3C does not make standards, it makes recommendations, but that's a fine semantic point that seems to be lost on 99.9999% of the populace.] Is it the intent of the WSP to be a clearing house for user complaints? In the absence of good faith on the part of the tool creators, the only recourse against failure to implement standards is user backlash. I can see that a user advocacy group could provide some benefit here (the Web equivalent of Ralph Naders' group?). But it's not clear what else might be done or how the WSP could serve in this capacity. The major vendors have already learned that users will take what they're given (imagine trying to earn a living in the information management industry and not use computers that run Microsoft software--it's pretty hard). Is it realistic to think that we can change Microsoft's practices? Because that's who we're talking about, Microsoft--Netscape, now that they've seen that standards and openness are their only hope of differentiation from MS, is on the side of right and good. What other vendors do we have to fear? Sun? They've got Java and everything to gain by it being a standard. Inso? As EBT, they've been good standards players from the start and have excellent technical resources who know how to do the right thing and will, I predict, do it (not that they play much outside the big-industry nitch market in any case). IBM? They're essentially pure user and understand the value of standards to themselves and their customers. Editor vendors? Maybe, but who besides MS has enough market share outside the core SGML industry to even have an effect? HP? They're in the same boat as Sun. Adobe? Maybe, but Adobe has its own de facto standard, PDF, that nobody, least of all Adobe, seems to care about formally standardizing (why should they when the US government declared it a standard by requiring its use for electronic document interchange--yet another monopoly granted by the government {anyone remember the railroad industry circa 1880}?). Adobe doesn't make browsers and their SGML/XML editor can't implement the style standards without being completely rewritten anyway. Arbortext only survives on the basis of ADEPT*Editor being as complete as possible an implementation of the SGML and XML standards (that's why people buy it). SoftQuad is in the same boat as Arbortext, but with less market share (but better prospects for producing a low-cost, high-value XML/SGML editor given their technology base). Corel tries hard and has good channels, but they've never been able to lever Word out of the way--their SGML support is good (if not perfect), but has never been marketed effectively. It seems to me that the real question is: how do we bring pressure to bear on Microsoft to support and implement standards? In fairness to MS, I should note that all the *technical* people I know at Microsoft (which is an admittedly small sample) have all been consistent in their commitment to standards and have demonstrated the ability to understand the standards sufficient to enable correct implementation of them (of course, most of the people I know I Microsoft I know because of their work on the development of XML). I'd like to think that this sample is representative. Certainly as a developer of technology, Microsoft is capable of doing whatever it decides to do. The question is, what will they decide to do and why. Certainly it is not the technologists that make the business decisions at Microsoft (if it was, they wouldn't be where they are today [and we wouldn't be having this discussion because we'd either still be mired in a swamp of competing and incompatible information system platforms, already have true standards-based systems, or still complaining about IBM as the Big Evil]). But as a business driven by an imperative to make money, Microsoft has consistently shown a disdain for standards and the needs of its customers. It essentially owns the information systems marketplace on PCs, which means most of the desktops in the world. It has a significant share of the back-end market (at ISOGEN, most of the people working on workstations use Microsoft software to do most of their work--what does that tell you?). Except for Adobe's PDF, Microsoft owns the data formats (and therefore the data) of most of the world's documents and this doesn't seem to be near to changing. Putting RTF or Excel into XML form won't change that situation much (although it will make it marginally easier to do stuff with an otherwise proprietary format because you'll be able to apply normal SGML and XML tools to it, even if you can't get reliable documentation for what it is you've got). Steve Newcomb often stresses that standards are contracts between data owners and users and the creators of tools that support those owners and users and he's 100% right. Which begs the question: what higher authority do the signatories of those contracts appeal to do resolve conflicts? National and international standards have some legal authority as contracts because they are created by national bodies that can legally and legimately put the weight of their countries behind them: they can, for example, enact laws that require the use of certain standards. The standards created by ANSI or DIN or ISO have been created by bodies that have some authority derived from the people governed by the governments that sponsor the standards authorities. The W3C, by contrast, is a consortium of vendors and users. It has no formal authority. It is not an agent of any government. It does not derive, however indirectly, from the will of the people. Therefore, it has absolutely no leverage by which to coerce or encourage respect for the recommendations it creates except the persuasive force of whatever arguments it might make or the degree to which it can influence popular opinion so as to change consumption habits. But since its members are the very organizations that need to be convinced to implement these standards, it's not realistic to expect the W3C to beat hard on its largest member. (I suppose it could bring civil suits against member companies that failed to live up to their agreements as consortium members, but who would pay for the cost of such a suit? How likely would Microsoft be to remain a W3C member if the W3C sued it?). That leaves only users themselves to demand that vendors do the right thing. Can the WSP lead that fight? Can it effect a world-wide boycott of Internet Explorer? Can it save us from our own laziness? I don't know--I hope so. If babies were dying or cute fuzzy creatures were going extinct because browsers weren't implementing HTML 4.0 correctly, I'd have more confidence. But the only thing that's at stake is our freedom from vendor oppression, something that few people even seem to realize as a threat and fewer still have the actual power or will to avoid (what operating system am I running? what browser do I use? what scheduling program do I manage with? what programming language do I hack in? do I want to use any of them? No. Do I, as long as I want to work as an IS consultant who can pick clients that aren't Unix-only, non-government-contractor shops, have a choice? No.). People aren't rioting in the streets because there are only two cable companies in the US or that 90% of all media outlets are owned by four corporations (or something close to that) or that the number of one-paper towns has increased dramatically in the last 50 years. So why should they care that a single corporation owns 90% of their data (by owning the definitions of its form and the software they have to use to access and modify it?)? So I'm wondering what the true motivation of the WSP is: publicity generator? counter to the W3C? public action group ala Nader's Raiders? The Green Peace of the Web? Tax shelter? It's definitely not clear from the WSP Web site exactly what it *is* or what it plans to *do*. I'd like to know more. Cheers, E. -- <Address HyTime=bibloc> W. Eliot Kimber, Senior Consulting SGML Engineer ISOGEN International Corp. 2200 N. Lamar St., Suite 230, Dallas, TX 75202. 214.953.0004 www.isogen.com </Address> xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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