Comments

• John Drinkwater

  2007-10-21 11:24:16

  Roy, be careful linking to the OpenDocument Foundation, they’re mostly full of shit*. If you want to link to CDF, point to W3C, the actual organisation that hosts it.
  
  OpenDocument Foundation: “Our quest ended in April of 2006, when we gave up all hope of ever getting our ODF iX interoperability enhancements accepted by OASIS. At that point we went back to the W3C stable of Internet Technologies, and went to work on CDF, the "Compound Document Format".”
  
  * So basically, because no one would listen to them, they have moved on to another place where they can cause a fuss about adding “interoperability enhancements”, i.e., the things people _need_ for Office interoperability. Yay, let’s ruin two standards while we’re at it! A total pile of FUD.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2007-10-21 14:12:35

  Thanks for the warning, John. I am being pulled from both sides of this argument and I think there is some substance to be found in both. I hear both sides and decide for myself, e.g. by taking heaps of the Alliance's paperwork to read while on vacation. I still trust independent bodies more than I trust large corporations with complex agendas.
  
  As far as W3C goes, watch how we ended with a Web that is not truly open, portable, accessible, interoperable, etc. We're still in the 'cleanup phase' (Zeldman, Meyer et aI) and with things like Flash we're actually stepping backwards. It's not the W3C's fault, but we need to learn from past mistakes.
  
  I suspect that W3C is now headed by a guy from Microsoft (Wilson?), which is funny because Microsoft pretty much admitted ignoring Web standards (deliberately even). The W3C is not even a sufficiently open forum that is available for everyone to participate in. Shades of other consortia...
  
  I confide in Gary and Marbux not only because of their work on standards, but also because of long-lives involvement in antitrust litigation and contributions to Groklaw. Their recent anti-ODF stance puts me off to be honest, but there are lessons to be taken from various observations.

• Bruce D'Arcus

  2007-10-21 21:03:23

  Gary/Sam/Marbux like to suggest that they're the independent-minded little guys in tune with the grassroots and fighting the good fight against the big vendors, but the truth is far more complex than that. By all means keep an open mind, but I think if you talk to most of us that were previously affiliated with the Foundation, the consensus would tend towards John's interpretation.
  
  As a simple example, on the ODF Metadata SC at OASIS we went through a period of contentiousness on technical details that essentially pitted engineers from Sun against me (an independent developer) and an engineer from IBM. One of the engineers that helped bridge the gap was a guy who used to work for Sun but now works for Novell. Ultimately we all came to some consensus that we're happy with, and I don't think you can reduce the technical debates to their provenance. Conspiracy theory is cheap.

• Chris Lilley

  2007-10-30 16:37:16

  Just to correct one of the comments, W3C is not "headed by someone from Microsoft". The W3C Director is Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C CEO is Steve Bratt. Perhaps Roy was confusing the W3C as a whole with tone of its working groups, HTML, which is co-chaired by Chris Wilson of Microsoft and Dan Connolly of W3C. CDF is another working group, chaired by Kevin Kelly of IBM.
  
  W3C process encourages wide participation, and comments may be made by anyone. The last call and candidate recommendation phases are specifically designed to get feedback and implementation experience.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2007-10-30 20:17:43

  Chris,
  
  You are correct. I had them all mixed. Thanks a lot for clarifying this.