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

W3C

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:1/13/1999; 3:08:15 AM
Topic:HTML Refresh Language
Msg #:2072 (In response to 2070)
Prev/Next:2071 / 2073

Good points about the W3C. People forget it's a consortium. It's not really a standards body. It's purpose is to serve the interests of its members and the price is very very high. Someone asked me why I didn't submit the XML-RPC spec to W3C. It would have cost me $50K to do it, and I don't have that kind of money lying around.

Further, if it got attention on the W3C site, it surely would have spawned a competing spec or two from one of the big companies. That would be OK if they deployed quickly. But they don't do that..

Hey, maybe I don't know how to work in W3C (I don't) but do any of them? Has W3C been effective? When I hear about yet another W3C spec, I link to it from Scripting News and then read the spec, get as far as I can, and then remind myself to worry about it if it ever gets deployed.

We need another way to work together. We may be back in DefactoLand. Both Allaire and UserLand seem to agree on this. Small companies who waste their time trying to make it work with W3C will be frustrated, I predict.

OTOH, I guess having your spec on the W3C site is good for raising money, as DataChannel has proven. Does it mean anyone is implementing WebBroker? I don't know. Is anyone?

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