Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: W3C's 'Moral Majesty'
 At 07:06 PM 9/19/99 +0100, Dan Brickley wrote: >On Sun, 19 Sep 1999, Steven R. Newcomb wrote: >> [...] The W3C is a software vendor consortium; people (including W3C >> members) who believe otherwise are deluding themselves. >[...] > >I'm sorry, I can't let this one just slip past. As Bristol University's >Advisory Committee representative to W3C, I can assure you that agendas >other than software vending are represented. Bristol University may be >many things, and there are many groups here who do produce saleable >software, but we're not software vendors. We joined W3C to participate >in the development of specifications that affect teaching, learning and >research applications in our *.ac.uk environment. And we're not alone >in this... While Dan is right - there are in fact customer organizations, even non-profit customer organizations, with representation and participation at the W3C - Steven's point still holds a lot of water, if not quite as much as before. One key area of 'consumers' that I don't see represented as W3C members is open source software developers, which almost by definition don't have the resources to pay the fees. (There are, admittedly, some very wealthy open source developers - I don't count myself among them.) Even more formal organizations like the Apache Group don't appear to be represented (last I checked). IBM develops some open source software, even important open source software, but I think they're something of a special case, to say the least. There doesn't appear to be any way to get into the W3C by sweat equity, unless of course a group wants to invite you into the process as an invited expert. Invited expert invitations don't have any direct connection to sweat, however - as Steven pointed out earlier, it's a matter of being _invited_, not of _earning_ a seat at the table. Also, as Tim Berners-Lee pointed out, invited experts must pledge "commitment of effort and acceptance of the charter". Acceptance of the charter implies accepting all the secrecy that goes along with the W3C's activities, something I wouldn't accept - and something that seems deeply incompatible with the open participation principle underlying most open source projects. If the 'top people' in a project can participate at the W3C, they're still hampered from taking advantage of the full power of their development base by the rules keeping them from sharing information on W3C activities. (I realize that the W3C itself operates several excellent open-source projects. Unfortunately, this work does not seem to have had an effect on the approach taken by the main body of W3C activities.) The tumult and chaos of the browser wars seem to have numbed many developers into accepting the W3C's status uncritically, but I don't know how long that acceptance will last. Opening participation significantly would seem to give the W3C a lot more legitimacy heading into the future, although it would certainly increase the pressure for accountability by the W3C. Simon St.Laurent XML: A Primer (2nd Ed - September) Building XML Applications Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies http://www.simonstl.com 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/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 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...) 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
