Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

What would peace look like?

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:12/2/1998; 4:12:21 AM
Topic:What would peace look like?
Msg #:676
Prev/Next:675 / 677

We've had an incredible discussion here on the future of web browsers, and I've gotten private email from Netscape's Marc Andreessen saying he's reading the messages here and getting some good ideas for how to evolve their browser. That's good! That's why we're accumulating this stuff here.

One of the reasons I didn't join the support-the-standards movement a couple of months ago is that I think the standards bodies are needed if there's a browser war going on, and we've seen how slow that process is. In my message in response to Andreessen's I asked him to look at the example of Cookies, an idea in response to a need, quick action, an imperfect spec for sure, but it works, and it happened in a heartbeat. One day there were cookies, the day before, no cookies.

We can move that quickly again. There's so much work to do. Let's not be wed to the process. Great movement in software is driven by engineering in response to user demand, not by satisfying a process. I'm pro-engineering, anti-politics.

Yesterday I sent an email into Microsoft at an executive level asking if they could get together with AOL and see if they could figure out what peace would look like. They have the power to declare the browser wars over if they're creative. Then it occurred to me that I should make the same offer publicly, to people who develop for and use the web. What would peace look like? Never mind what you want from the browser vendors, you are the territory they're fighting for. What can you do to make such a victory seem unpalatable? How an we get these two companies to be responsible to the users and developers and stop focusing so much energy on each other?

This might be a historic time. Let's see what we can do with the opportunity.

Dave

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:46:08 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.