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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Major W3C messup
From:       Vadim Plessky <lucy-ples () mtu-net ! ru>
Date:       2001-10-01 11:44:49
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On Sunday 30 September 2001 16:44, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
|   http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-30-001-20-NW-CY
|
|   Basically, the W3C is planning to allow "standards" into html and all
| that will need its implementors to pay royalties, effectively making
| efforts like Konqueror, lynx and Mozilla impossible to be complete.
|
|   They've apparently made a point of hiding this announcement - today's the
|   end of the period for taking comments on the new policy
|   (comment@openphd.net).
|
|   If anyone else reads this in time, please take the time to tell them this
|   is not the way to go (no flames please - that won't help).

Ok, I wrote a letter to them - let's hope they will be not so ignorrant to 
dispose my mail from Oct.1st.

But there are more questions coming to my mind now.
* How important are W3C standards?
[disclosure: I am a W3C standards supporter/advocate; at least "as of today"]

Seriously, here are the facts.
MS has around 92% of browser market share, and its market share continue to 
grow at the expense of Netscape (or, at least, keeping this level)
Most widely used W3C standards are HTML, CSS and DOM.
CSS1 was approved around 5 years ago, but what browser CSS1-compliant?
NONE browser on the planet!
And none browsers is CSS2-compliant, too.
MS recently released IE6, which was supposed to be a "major upgrade"
Test results show, that this IE6 has CSS support just on level of MS IE 5.5, 
may be slightly better than IE 5.0.
And, MS has _92%_ market share for browsers.
So, MS doesn't hurry to be W3C-compliant.  So, please tell me, why somebody 
else should *pay money* being W3C-compliant, or just using those specs?
I find this stupid.
As about DOM, DOM support is much better, and most of DOM1 is supported by 
Mozilla. But MS fails here as well - and still has no problem retaining 
leadership position.
So, *how* important standards are, when market leaders feel comfortable just 
ignoring them? And ignoring not for a moment, but for 5+ years timeframe?
Do you think situation will change in the future? I hardly believe in this.
Even if MS fixed most of CSS1 bugs and provided full CSS2 support in IE7, and 
released IE7 one year from now, it will take another 3-4 years, 5 in total, 
to achieve significant market penetration (and replace MS IE 4.0, 5.0, etc.)
So, generally speaking, there will be no standard-based WEB environment in 
nearest 5 years.
And _the only_ force which can improove situation is Open Source, which is 
based on royalty-free model.

Therefor, I am quite surprised to see any efforts in W3C for non-royalty-free 
licensing models.
By the way, where is Netscape/AOL opinion on this subject?
Or they already decided to giveup on Mozilla?
 
*who define web standards?
Yes, W3C was doing this for some time.
Looking at current situation (see facts above) they are somewhat failed.
Yes, there is a group of enthusiast who support these standards, 
participating in W3C-mailing lists, etc. 
But what is the actual number of them? Average traffic on W3C-style and 
W3C-DOM mailing lists is less than 100 messages per month, and (still) most 
common questions asked is "how to do this in Mozilla, t works in IE" , etc. , 
not related to standards itself.
And number of posters is less than 100, don't know number of recepients 
though.
And if we accept the fact that _users_ finally define standards, by accepting 
 standards (using browser which works fine on favourite site, etc.) he 
comfortable with, we need to recognize that MS is defining standards, at 
least during last couple of years.
So, situation becomes quite ironical. Has W3C been forced by MS to do such 
licensing model changes?  And do we speak about World-Wide-Web *Consortium* 
after all?
   
|
|   LLaP
|   bero

-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
Do you have Arial font installed? Just test it!
http://kde2.newmail.ru/font_test_arial.html
 
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