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Comments: 145 + - News: Jeff Jaffe Named CEO of W3C on Tuesday March 09, @06:58PM
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blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.
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Mixed Feelings (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously this can go the other way as well, with IE imposing its standards onto w3c, and forcing the spec it
Nothing good ever came out of having (Score:2, Insightful)
good relations with microsoft. neither for their partners, nor their consumers.
and if ie imposes its own standards to w3c, we developers are going to ignore their standards. its simple as that.
Re: (Score:2)
There is always the WHATWG.
Re:Nothing good ever came out of having (Score:5, Insightful)
we developers are going to ignore their standards. its simple as that.
Bravo! Well said! In support of this stance, I'll be happy to take care of any of your clients that are foolish enough to want their websites to look and function similarly across all major browsers. Viva la revolucion!
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I agree it's a (Score:2)
bit annoying, isn't it?
The title isn't supposed to be the beginning of replies.
I know I've done it myself, but I won't do it anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what he meant is that if Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome all support one way to add a new feature and IE decides to support it in a different way, the W3C shouldn't make the IE way the standard one.
Talking about that, where's Opera's support for box-shadow and border-radius? They're at version 10 for crying out loud.
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it will allow w3c to influence Microsoft more
Or do you mean allow Microsoft to influence W3C more?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I get a +5, Insightful for repeating part of the parent post, too? Dude, he already said that.
Wow, you're right, sorry, I didn't read the whole post before I commented...but...this is slashdot, isn't that a requirement for posting? Who actually reads articles? /. is a forum for half-baked, half-assed opinionated remarks written solely for the purpose of starting flame wars. At least that is what I was told when I signed up years ago.
I don't think the AC was blaming you for writing that. I think he was blaming the moderators for promoting it. You probably didn't read the article or the summary, and yes that is rather typical around here since people are generally more concerned about comment visibility than they are about things like readability, useful non-redundant contributions, or factual accuracy. Style over substance is highly prized in superficial societies and all of that. But it's expected that moderators shouldn't be in su
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Okay, that's all well and good, but even with your arguments I still think that Mario is better than Sonic.
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As long as Microsoft had a decent standard, that could be implemented without patent/IP-rights, I don't even care that much. A workable standard people follow is better that a perfect standard that 70% of deployed browser instances promptly ignore.
Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Insightful)
But the problem is, they rarely do. Generally Microsoft's ideas start out just fine, then they play the patent card, extend features and end up with a product radically different than their specifications. The problem isn't that Microsoft is making the standards, it is just because in recent years Microsoft hasn't made a single, decent, workable standard without playing the patent card.
Agreed. It's not an issue of acceptability of standards. Microsoft has lots of talented employees to whom it could assign that task. It's an issue of trust. Time and again, this company has proven that it will act in its own interests (which is acceptable from a corporation) to the detriment of everyone else's interests (which is not acceptable from anyone).
Meanwhile, it has given few or no examples of honoring the purpose of open standards. There's simply no reason whatsoever to believe that this time they really intend to play fair and be honest, and by that I mean the-truth-and-the-whole-truth honesty. It's an amazing example of collective stupidity and/or a collective short memory that anyone even pretends this is a question. It might be comedic if it didn't cause so many complications for so many people.
Naturally Microsoft doesn't have to bear the cost of those complications. When it decided long ago that IE would not follow standards very well, this forced many Web developers to expend a great deal of extra effort to handle IE's incompatibilities. Let X equal the amount of time and effort it would take to design such a Web site for a single universal standard to which all browsers adhere. Let Y equal the (larger) amount of time and effort it took to design such a Web site that handles IE's intentional incompatibilities. Do you think Microsoft has ever had to pay for Y - X? In principle this makes them a lot like spammers, not in the sense that MS sends tons of unsolicited e-mails, but in the sense that others have to bear the cost of their marketing.
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A good thing for Microsoft maybe. Expect the W3C to start saying the IE way is the standard anyday now.
w3c outliving its usefulness (Score:2)
Given all of the link ins between the w3C and the corporations, maybe it is times to abolish it and start with a new standards body. One of the problem with involving companies like Microsoft in this is that they tend to try to subvert the process to keep standards from addressing needs, so they can implement their own proprietary solutions (like video in html5). Maybe it should be run by people who have no ties to corporations and who develop open source software only. Or why not allow the people who run
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You have to have all of these people on board for things to work.
If no one even attempts a standard and everyone does their own thing in parallel, do you think it would make web developer *easier*?
No fucking way, it would mean you'd get to write the website 10x instead of 3x like you do now.
Re:w3c outliving its usefulness (Score:5, Insightful)
The links between W3C and the corporations that actually implement technology used on the web are one of the things that make it useful as a standards body.
If the major vendors weren't involved in the standards body, it would be an academic exercise with no impact on the real world.
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Uuum, and so is everybody else in there. Believe me, IBM doesn’t like MS fucking up W3C. And so do the others.
But I agree about election in general. Just that that is even easier to subvert, since people are cattle. Look at the government elections. That is what would happen. Only worse.
If, then it should be decided by competent people. election power = competence. election actual choice = election power * election choice.
competence = measured by others with competence.
The only problem is, how to star
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What does rope have to do with anything?
Because anyone who suggests an alternative, community-oriented way of doing things must be immediately discredited and comparison to hippies singing kum-bay-ah around a campfire was the best that the GP could come up with.
W3C dead already, WHATWG is the way to go (Score:2)
The W3C is long dead already, the WHATWG is the way to go for the future.
Re:W3C dead already, WHATWG is the way to go (Score:4, Informative)
As for the W3C, it's far from dead. If anything it's the WHATWG that's dying: none of their other projects have anywhere near the same community following HTML5 did.
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Ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
I have had queezy feelings about the W3C for some time now and this just makes them even sicker. At this point, I would rather almost have the FSF friendly browser makers create a standards body that is, well, for those people that are interested in open systems and not playing leverage games with it.
I reminded of what became of OpenGL, when a cool little company tried to make a nice standard for everybody and instead the whole thing got hammered by a bunch of egos until it was more or less abandoned in mainstream Windows based 3D rendering.
Finally, I wish people could see that patents and lengthy copyrights are less free market than what we have now. You can say a system is free market when it is really a hodge podge of government subsidies and monopoly grants. I would propose that FSF people start calling themselves Free Market Services, and simultaneously label closed shops as Government Regulated Services, which is really what they are.
Oh, HIM (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't fathom how people like that get jobs like this, what on Earth he is going to do (conversations with Tim Berners-Lee are likely to be cut rather short) and why this is deemed to be news. It's just another nail in the coffin of the W3C to have an idiot CEO like this.
Re:Oh, HIM (Score:4, Funny)
I can't fathom how people like that get jobs like this...
He's probably just a better bullshitter than the other bullshitters in the bullshitting game.
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Bullshit! ;)
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They're full of the most buzzword-laden bullshit I've ever seen from a CTO who is supposed to know what things are about technically.
Don't let the T in CTO confuse you. CTOs are generally MBAs who barely know their way around a PC, much less a server or network.
Re:Oh, HIM (Score:5, Informative)
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That is all CTOs, they are all empty suits.
Who's next? (Score:2)
First we get Chris Wilson as the chair of the HTML working group, and now Jeff Jaffe as W3C CEO. Tim Berners-Lee is now going to focus on HTML5? He could have focused on XHTML2 and we'd have ended up with a better standard.
How many not-necessarily-desirable people are going to infiltrate the W3C before it becomes completely useless?
One more reason why W3C needs to be absorbed into a body that can stick to its mission.
How will this affect HTML5 video??? (Score:2, Troll)
This is terrible news.
His swan song even talks about the "great satisfaction" of working with "Inventive people who write more software patents per capita than anywhere else".
HTML5 already has big problems with software patents forcing it to exclude all video format recommendations. What influence will this guy have in W3C?
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This is a pretty sad troll attempt. You need to make it less obvious. You should add something about let you use their hard work.
"Copious links"? (Score:3, Informative)
This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.
So I follow the link in TFS. And? I see a barely coherent rant about "evil enemies of Linux" infiltrating W3C - a bunch of links to that effect, but none to do specifically with Jeff - followed by the part that actually mentions him as the new "evil guy" on the block. The specific quote is "He was chosen despite his love for software patents", followed by 3 links. Of those, only two are actually unique (#2 and #3 are the same link). I reproduce them here, in order, for convenience:
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/21/mono-moonlight-novl-strategy/ [boycottnovell.com]
http://boycottnovell.com/2010/01/31/jeff-jaffe-and-zonker-quit/ [boycottnovell.com]
Now, here's the thing. Neither one of those even contains the word "patent" anywhere, much less in any citations!
Apparently - judging by the first of those links - the sole reason why they even speak of his "love of software patents" is because he dares to promote Mono and Moonlight.
Re: (Score:2)
So anyone who promotes any proprietary software from a major company (since all of them have patents on anything they can), is a lover of software patents and Microsoft apologist?
Sorry, but that's insane. Some of us use or suggest others use proprietary software because it can be the best tool for the job. Practicality actually does trump idealism in some cases for some people. Shocking, I know.
No more consequences. (Score:2)
Yet more proof, if it were needed, that once you reach the CXX level there are never any consequences for any of your actions :-(.
Jeremy.
Witch hunts (Score:3, Insightful)
I love the smell of witch hunts in the morning. That guy wasn't a "key architect" of the Novell deal, he wasn't even part of the company's leadership when it was finalized between Hovsepian and Ballmer. What he did do for many years was run the openSUSE project. But why let facts get in the way? The submitter of this flamebait (because what does one call it?) is one of BoycottNovell's groupies. He hangs out on their chat room as "ender270" and is currently in the middle of a legal dispute with David Schlesinger, one of the members of the GNOME board of directors - who incidentally was also attacked by BoycottNovell - subsequently the proprietor "Dr." Schestowitz was forced to issue an apology [boycottnovell.com] for that.
But of course, his crime is that he dared work for Novell. For this he should be punished for all eternity.
BoycottNovell and the 12 people (including one of our past [slashdot.org] resident trolls) who count themselves as members of that "community" are the ass-end of FOSS advocacy.
Re:Witch hunts (Score:4, Informative)
Jeff was *definitely* one of the architects Novell/Microsoft deal, and had been part of the leadership for at least a year when it was finalized. I know. I was there.
But don't let facts get in the way of your post.
Jeremy.
Parent
Re:Break out the tar and feathers (Score:4, Interesting)
"Microsoft apologist"... is that like a "communist sympathizer"?
If Communism is a single, unified organization with both a multibillion-dollar budget and many experienced PR people dedicated to providing its own apologia, then yes the two terms have a lot in common.
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Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
So are you referring to IBM? Oracle? Intel?
Re:Break out the tar and feathers (Score:5, Insightful)
So are you referring to IBM? Oracle? Intel?
Those three don't seem to have the online fanclub that Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) seem to have. The times I have seen stories about Oracle or Intel or IBM misbehaving, there were not nearly so many people who came out of the woodwork to defend them or make excuses for them as when a similar story appears about Microsoft. But for any who do this for the companies you mentioned, I'd say the same thing applies (leading me to wonder what your point was). If you are suggesting I am picking on Microsoft, I ask you one question: when it comes to abusive behavior that does not benefit the public, is the name of the corporation really important to you?
I personally feel no need to spend my time defending a corporation that has large budgets and legions of advertisers, PR people, and lawyers dedicated to giving it a good public image whether it actually deserves one or not. I have no rational explanation for the motives of people who do feel such a need. I suppose some of them may indeed be astroturfers but I don't think that's a satisfying explanation. It doesn't explain the genuine "fanboy" nature of much of this behavior, and I (would like to) think professional astroturfers could do a better job than most such posts I have seen on Slashdot. Personally I think it's typical "us against them" behavior like you see among sports fans who root for different teams, and about equally unsophisticated.
That I don't mention Linux or GPL'd software in general here is quite deliberate. I don't know of any authors of GPL'd software who are in a position to force their software or their standards on anyone. The very nature of it makes that difficult if not impossible. Therefore, there are no such abuses like embrace-and-extend coming from this group that would require apologists in the first place.
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When did they go threatening people with patents they refuse to even discuss?
So unless they are running a protection racket too, no not them.
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...so why would they care anymore whether IE will ever be compliant as long as corporate IT continue to make IE the default browser?
You've apparently put a little thought into it, so anything Microsoft says about standards is not intended for you. It's intended for people who honestly believe (because they have not thought about it) that an organization with billions of dollars, vast resources, and many talented developers could not make a standards-compliant browser if it really wanted to. Microsoft has never wanted to compete in a level playing field on the basis of merit, in terms of who can produce the best implementation of a giv
Re:How about? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we break away from the W3C and its strange policies and instead appoint a community-based chair with people from Mozilla, Apple, Opera, Google, Microsoft (if they would show) and anyone else who wanted to make a browser. I'm not really seeing the benefit of the W3C lately, and with this, why don't we just break away?
The main reason to not do that is that you probably won't get either the (main) browser makers or the users to show up. Without them, you're simply irrelevant. But if they do turn up, you've effectively got the W3C (with maybe a round of musical chairmanships at the top). Lot of fuss and bother to achieve nothing of value.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How about we break away from the W3C and its strange policies and instead appoint a community-based chair with people from Mozilla, Apple, Opera, Google, Microsoft (if they would show) and anyone else who wanted to make a browser. I'm not really seeing the benefit of the W3C lately, and with this, why don't we just break away?
The main reason to not do that is that you probably won't get either the (main) browser makers or the users to show up. Without them, you're simply irrelevant. But if they do turn up, you've effectively got the W3C (with maybe a round of musical chairmanships at the top). Lot of fuss and bother to achieve nothing of value.
That's only the case because we are doing this market thing backwards. Specifically, the corporations involved have more power than their customers. So instead of listening to what their customers want and creating products in response to this demand, they produce the products first that serve their own interests and use clever marketing (and take advantage of existing marketshare) to artifically create demand for them. The result is that things like IE are on a take-it-or-leave-it basis that is not open
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Precisely such a thing exists, and is called WHATWG [wikipedia.org]. That said, specifically for HTML5 purposes, after developing it for a while separately from W3C, they've effectively forced W3C into dropping XHTML 2.0, and forming an HTML5 working group with essentially the same membership as WHATWG. The separate organization still exists, though.
Re:How about? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think the W3C is? It’s exactly that! And believe it or not, parts of the most important standards even came from Microsoft people. They are not all evil, you know.
I’m very happy that we now, for the first time, finally have all browsers support one single set of standards (XHTML 1.x / CSS 2.x / DOM 2 / JS), by listening to the W3C again. Instead of the chaos of the entire 90s and 00s!
What strange policies are you talking about? I find the work of the W3C nice. They care. Which is obvious, since they are the browser makers, amongst other interested groups.
Are you even a web developer?
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In Particular, MS's Box Model is less Evil (Score:2)
parts of the most important standards even came from Microsoft people. They are not all evil, you know.
Particularly their box model. That's right, I said it. The Microsoft box model is actually better than the w3c's css 2.1 model.
With either box model, you have the equation ContainerWidth = Padding + ContentWidth. But under the w3c model, you have to solve this equation, every time ContainerWidth or Padding changes. That's assuming you're using units where this is actually possible. If you want to use relat
A Little History Lesson (Score:5, Informative)
How about we break away from the W3C and its strange policies and instead appoint a community-based chair with people from Mozilla, Apple, Opera, Google, Microsoft (if they would show) and anyone else who wanted to make a browser.
Who is this 'we' you keep talking about?
The W3C is a Consortium (that's the 'C') consisting of interested industry members. Right now, businesses who care how web technologies are developed have a vested interest in sitting down together and at least going through the motions of standardising languages and protocols.
The W3C might have democratic mechanisms, but it is neither a populist nor a grassroots organisation. It is, and always has been, an industry body.
I honestly don't know why Tim Berners-Lee decided that an industry consortium would be the best means to achieve web standards. I do know, however, that he chose deliberately and only after consideration. I suppose he hoped that collective interests would trump selfish motives and, if that failed, that other companies could be relied on to reign in the more egregious abuses.
It needs to be said that, in this respect at least, the W3C has been largely successful, but only in the way that standards bodies generally are: Through endless, awkward compromises that sometimes defy reason, and often with only reluctant support from the very people who developed the standards in the first place.
The W3C was born at a time when Netscape Communications ruled the roost, and acted like they didn't need anyone else. Virtually all of the abominations of early 'Tag Soup' HTML can be laid at Netscape's feet. Following that, we saw years of tug-of-war spec development, in which MS and Netscape defined their competing and incompatible implementations of numerous new elements and attributes.
But the W3C persevered and (painfully) slowly managed to bring us back from the brink to HTML 4 and eventually XHTML. There've been some interesting manoeuvres of late regarding WHATWG and HTML 5, but most interesting is the fact that the 'Tag Soup' crew and other unilateralists are more often on the defensive than in control. Much of that - indeed much of the conventional wisdom that Web Standards are Good - is the result of the efforts of the W3C and its members.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The W3C might have democratic mechanisms, but it is neither a populist nor a grassroots organisation.
It's better than some. For one thing they are very committed to having debate and discussion take place in open forums, with email discussion and F2F meeting notes available to the public. This is the polar opposite of the closed door process Microsoft has lately preferred.
Re:How does it feel (Score:4, Funny)
See the løveli lakes.
The wøndërful telephøne system.
And mäni interesting furry animals.
Including the majestik møøse.
A Møøse once bit my sister...
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"...
We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.
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