Re: Web Philosophy

["Martin v. Loewis" <martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de>]

> The desire to participate must be accompanied by the willingness to write a
> rather large check for the annual membership fee.

Right: $50,000 for full membership, and $5,000 for affiliate
membership, per year. Compared to membership in other standards
organizations I'm familiar with (such as OMG or ITU-T), it is not that
much.

There are other means of influencing as well: W3C publishes candidate
recommendations, and the public has an opportunity to review those
quite some time before they get adopted. Many of the member expers
have a technical background and will be open to technical arguments,
so providing feedback should help to avoid technical inconsistencies,
and underspecification. I'm sure many readers of this list have
participated that way in the past, without paying a dime.

Just sitting back and complaining about the results when they are
final is inappropriate, IMO.

Regards,
Martin