[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: W3C's 'Moral Majesty'
It is a hard thing to be the moral authority standing between the king and the object of his desire. No sane man wants the job, and if by proclamation, he gets it, he would do well to find some means to let the king have his kate and edith too. The crux of the issue is that technical rationale for changes to the specification should be made public. Not the discussion itself, but the rationale. Talk to the ISO editors about how they handle it. If I were you, I'd have a long heart to heart with Charles Goldfarb as well. He has a rather good record for making it work and keeping his skin throughout. I have found him to be a deep and very resourceful man and he has an excellent stereo. If we are involved this deeply in a discussion of morality on a technical list, we cannot deny the depth of the concern of the community. We can recognize: 1. SGML made for years in face of disregard. XML has to survive a little too much regard. That's the job. It can't be avoided. 2. The W3C WGs can't do it all. The coalition of vendors large and small, multiple standards groups (IETF, ISO, MPEG etc) all have a stake and a say. 3. It is impossible for one man to be the focus of that much firepower for a long time. To paraphrase Byron, the sword wears out the scabard. Any long term solution to these problems require a long term view to the process of specifying and getting the contracts in place which get the system from phase to phase. If there is a need for a vision, it is not the technical vision, but the vision of how these contracts will be made and executed. It is dry work. It is a great achievement, one for which some are remembered long after the current issues are forgotten. If this discussion is to suggest a goal, Mr. Berners-Lee, perhaps it is time to stop, take some of the MacArthur money, go to whatever refuge, ashram, Mom's garden, wherever you contemplate best, and draw up that vision of how the W3C can work with the lists, the vendors, and the leaders of the other standards and specifications organizations to prepare for the time when the W3C and the web must evolve without need of a Director. This is not to say that you, personally, have not achieved something of worth, but that the best leaders eventually solve the problem of their own press. Then, you get to go fishing and let the prarie dog farm do its thing. len 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...)
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