re: breaking up?

[Guy Murphy <guy-murphy@easynet.co.uk>]

[SNIP]

[len]
What did you learn?

[guy]
I learnt the value of standards, and the cost in the absense of their
application.

[len]
Blood on the water is what wars always produce.   All I am saying is
standards are
what you make of them.  The trend to privatize is almost irresistable.
There is no
protection.

[guy]
Actually you said more than just that, implying that to follow standards was
pandering to the need to belong, and that to set standards was pandering to
the need to dominate.... however...

I agree to a point, there is however a slifing scale from collectivism to
private ownership.

The W3C represents a collective of companies, or a cartel.... perhaps not
the most representative of collectives.

ISO represents a collective of governments, regardless of varying degrees of
democratic representation among said governments it should be remembered,
but even assuming wide degrees of democracy among ISOs cartel....

I personally feel as a Web developer I have more chance of exerting preasure
upon the W3C than I do upon ISO, I certainly stand more chance of exerting
preasure upon the market forces that weigh upon W3Cs members... as was seen
through IE and NS.

[len]
Understand that the web designers were victims of their own making.

[guy]
NN4 use of the LAYER tag was nothing of my making. Nor was NN4 JSSS, which
was NS quite simply believing that it had enough weight to ride rough-shod
over the top of the W3C, a position that NS had been used to maintaining....
they got caught that time round on a down turn that they didn't foresee.

[len]
Once they screamed for things to be fixed, kill all the lawyers, down with
ISO,
up with the W3C, we be fast you be slow, and so forth,

[guy]
Well, that might have had something to do with the ISO not implimenting what
the vendors wanted to impliment.

Think on that again.... bunch of political bodies mandate standardisation
and then turn to a bunch of private companies with an expectant look "well
go on then impliment it".

The private companies decided to simply ignore the political bodies, and get
together themselves with the purpose to deciding what they wanted to
impliment... although yes, it took a while for them to see why it might be
worth their while sticking to what they agreed.

To argue the merit of the ISO within this domain is to argue the merit of
political institutions dictating to private companies what they should be
implimenting... short of turning this into a dictate of substance its simply
not a good fit.

I am all in favour of collective ownership... in a big way... and watched
with interest the production of XUL by the open source community. My hope
would be as disperate diverse groups become better practiced at organising
themselves that ad hoc comitees might become more viable for standards
production in the future, but to date they have been somewhat hit and
miss.... and yes I know there are some notable successes.

[len]

they simply set the
whole cycle back in motion.  The strongest competitor dominated the outcome.
IE
won because the web designers made it happen.  The NS designers lost in a
competition in which they set the expectations. Why did NS change their name
from Mosaic Communications and pay $2.3 million to the University of
Illinois?
What did they expect from their competitors?

[guy]

This issue isn't complex. NS4 lost because in comparison to IE4+ it sucked,
pure and simple. The better product won... it'll be interesting to see if
NS6 manages to make up any lost ground.

[len]
Spy Vs Spy.  Be smart, fast and execute brutally.  That is how evolution
usually
works sans a catastrophe.   Dinosaurs beat the mammals every time until the
big rocks fell from the sky and a lack of food and breathable air gave the
advantage to small, furry, egg-eaters.

"No good guys, no bad guys, just you and me and we both disagree."

[guy]
Again I agree with you to a point, but you are (perhaps deliberately for
rhetorical reasons) ignoring the role that cooperation and symbiosis place
withing evolutionary processes.

[len]
Again, what do you require of the organizations you empower?

Do you want standards police, slow processes for consensus, running code,
what sort of rule?  Choose who chooses your choices.  There ain't no justice
beyond that.
Nature doesn't create law.  The mammals do.

[guy]
I agree, and my hope is that the W3C retains focus upon what is reasonably
its domain of concern, and what is best handled by others.

[len]
If you want a cheerier outlook, see Gandhi.   In the long run, the tyrants
always fall.  Always.   But it doesn't happen of necessity.

[guy]
Aye but some tyranies can take an *awful* long time to fall, and quite often
are replaced by their former proxies, or their competition.... I could begin
citing lots of historical examples along with current ones, as could
yourself, but it would be way off topic.

At the end of the day most mortals, such as myself, when we engage with the
rest of the populace have to choose under which tyrany we'll operate....
sure there's a book in there somewhere "How to Live With Tyrany".

[SNIP]

Cheers
    Guy.