xml-dev - Re: Anti-Ranti

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

Rick JELLIFFE ecrit:
> 
> The number one issue for democratization of the WWW is how to accomodate
> input from members of cultures which are based on discretion, deferring
> to those you respect even when they are wrong, and politely waiting to
> be asked for an opinion at an appropriate time.  

Curiously, the official W3C process expects all non-members to wait
till "Proposed Recommendation" or (new) "Candidate Recommendation"
to express opinions.  An "appropriate" moment is already defined.

There are significant numbers of folk who don't think that it's
actually set up to really respond to such input effectively, though,
and that's from actually trying to use that process.  For example,
just a month exists to respond externally to a PR, and turning up
problems with a CR doesn't guarantee any attempt to fix them.

Point being, the severe constraints W3C has placed on its ability
to be responsive to non-members is at the root of that problem too.

 
> The way to make W3C open is not to enforce some particular
> organizational strategy on them, it is to make sure that all technology
> they (and we) create allows 
>  * plurality at the next-higher level;
>  * does not block out competition at its own level;
>  * is specified tightly enough that it can prevent snraling monolopies
> from creating incompatible versions--ultimately this can only be done by
> a branding and testing program.

I'd support all those.  Note that "specified tightly enough" involves
the same issues of specification maintainance that come up in branding
and testing ... consider the recent-ish discussion about how slow W3C
has been to get out XML errata, or to respond to problems in how the
XML spec deals with parameter entity references.

That is, the logical conclusion of those points involves more investment
in the trailing end of "standards" processes ... the ones which are known
to take up the most time, though they can't garner much in the way of
press releases for the membership.  Anyone who's written code knows that
"the last 20% takes up 80% of the time" ... and that applies to specs too.

- Dave



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