Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla kick W3C nerds to the curb

[tangor]

The organization that tries to advance web technology standards – the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C – has run into a roadblock: Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

Earlier this week, the four major browser makers expressed dissatisfaction with the W3C's DOM 4.1 specification, which defines a variety of new capabilities associated with the Document Object Model, through which web documents are described.

The specification – which is on its way to the Candidate Recommendation (CR) stage, a step in the process before formal approval – only has meaning if it is implemented in web browsers. And that's no longer a given.

[theregister.co.uk...]

Are we approaching another rough patch of standards and compliance? Or unleashing the power of the web?

[graeme_p]

Its clear that browser makers are showing their muscle, and it worries me because two of them have commercial interests at stake that may clash with the public interest which is what standards should serve.

[robzilla]

Its clear that browser makers are showing their muscle, and it worries me because two of them have commercial interests at stake that may clash with the public interest which is what standards should serve.

The article suggests it could be the other way around:

Where WHATWG values technical precision, he said, the W3C "is an organization supported by large annual fees from large companies, and its primary organizational goal is to ensure these companies remain as paying members."

Hickson pointed to the W3C's approach to digital restrictions rights management (DRM aka Encrypted Media Extensions) – something opposed by many in the web community, but supported by W3C members with substantial interests in copyrighted content.

[iamlost]

This is but another of the skirmishes that have been going on for about a decade ever since Hixie (Ian Hickson) went public with the concerns of the developers with the theorists in the XML-HTML working group - the theorists wanted HTML to die with v4 and xHTML to take over, especially super strict v2. Basically, the developers founded WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) to continue developing HTML. The W3C eventually realised that xHTML2 was DOA and agreed to take WHATWG's efforts and with some mods out came HTML5.

There continues to be a great disconnect between the two groups and this W3C DOM effort is but the latest. While most W3C working groups seem to function well there are a couple that are dysfunctional and increasingly disregarded by those actually supposed to be implementing the output.