Re: Web Philosophy

[Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com>]

Ann Navarro wrote:

> You end up with chaos, or something that looks like the
> progress that IETF gets.

This is irredeemable rubbish.

<rant>
I have come to the conclusion that the most public defenders of the W3C
are the W3C's own worst PR nightmare.  Now I would prefer more openness in
the W3C, but I'm not W3C curmudgeon to the extent that, say Simon is,
though I respect his view.

Nevertheless, I've observed that whenever this debate comes up in certain
fora, some of the W3C's defenders always seem to fall back to personal
attacks on their opponents or deprecation of the work of other organizations.

When I was arguing against xsl:script on xsl-list and I suggested that a
community effort to eliminate the root need for xsl:script would be
opportune, I mentioned OASIS and got back from Scott Boag of the XSL WG a
summary dismissal.  I also heard nastiness directed at OASIS in the
pre-RDDL discussion.  Ann Navarro's comment on the IETF is not the first
such put down of the IETF I've heard from a W3C booster.

I've had the priviledge of meeting or privately corresponding with many
W3C staffers and members, and I'm ever quite relieved to note that this
clique attitude is not typical within the W3C (nor is resistance to
more openness, I should add).

As Simon says, I've seen a lot of positive changes in the ways of the W3C
in recent times, and it's great to see the silent majority make things
happen.
</rant>

But back to consideration of the IETF's progress.  By any conceivable
accounting, I would consider that the organization that
brought us HTTP, SMTP, MIME, Internet Media Types, RFC822, LDAP, URL,
RFC-822 and WebDAV, to grab a short list, is a resounding success, and
enormously progressive.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python