Alternatives to the W3C

[Simon St.Laurent]

At 11:19 AM 1/17/00 -0600, Len Bullard wrote:
>Call it what you will, 
>running code that does something demonstrably useful for the community 
>of web users who really don't give a damm about the specs is a winning 
>strategy.  If you look at the email, you are being 
>told to your face to join up, pay your dues, or quit whining. 

I'm actually not concerned with those inside the W3C at this point - I
don't expect them to change their process based on a series of lectures
from non-members on a mailing list.  I'm not whining about the dues, which
I don't ever plan to pay anyway.  There are a lot of things they could do
that would strengthen their position against such complaints, but there
isn't much sign of such things happening.

I'm telling the rest of the world that the W3C (and vendor consortia in
general) is not the only to go about things, and that perhaps it's time,
well past time, to explore alternatives.

>It's a clue.  This is the tone of those whom so many of you seem 
>so desperate to help.  Face it, Simon, you got a lot further just 
>taking a group and creating a schema design.  Then you decided to 
>go along with the W3C in a spirit of cooperation.  Now we have a 
>baroque overbuilt draft for a schema that even XHTMLers have 
>yet to include in a design.  

The most important lesson I took from XSchema/DDML is that running code
rules.  While we had great community participation, we never got real code
on the ground. The spirit of cooperation, in the absence of real code, was
effectively the end of the project.

>Why not fill those holes with running code built over proprietary and 
>practical solutions which can be patented and by which your companies 
>can profit?

Because I have no interest whatsoever in proprietary solutions.

Sorry!

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

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