Re: snapshots vs living standards

On Saturday, 3 March 2012 at 13:56, Robin Berjon wrote:

> On Mar 2, 2012, at 19:27 , Philippe Le Hegaret wrote:
> > In a recent private discussion spawned from one on a W3C mailing list, I
> > was defending the "living standard" model we use at the WHATWG for
> > developing the HTML standard (where we just have a standard that we
> > update more or less every day to make it better and better) as opposed
> > to the "snapshot" model the W3C traditionally uses where one has a
> > "draft" that nobody is supposed to implement, and when it's "ready",
> > that draft is carved in stone and placed on a pedestal. The usual
> > argument is something like "engineering depends on static definitions,
> > because otherwise communication becomes unreliable". I wrote a lengthy
> > reply. I include it below, in case anyone is interested.
>  
>  
>  
> This post could have been a good start for an interesting discussion, but sadly Ian's definition of the "snapshot" model is largely a fantasy-grade strawman so there doesn't seem to be that much room for talking.
I think you are dismissing it off hand without clear justification (can you explain the straw-man? I would personally like to see a full evidence-based rebuttal). I tried to present similar evidence and make similar arguments to this list in the past.  

Irrespective of what is thought of the process, evidently something was done right to see the level of adoption and interoperability of HTML5 features (caniuse.com and similar sites present evidence that Ian is correct to this respect, specially for a specification that has not even reached CR). I don't know how much that has to do with the WHATWG process (if anything) - but the HTML/WHAT-WG group is doing something right (even if a lot of people are getting really pissed off in/by the process). This is also a good indicator of HTML5's rise over the decline of XHTML and XML:

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=xhtml,+html5,+xml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1

Do you have any other explanation as to why we are seeing such a high rate of adoption and interoperability with HTML5 vs other standards-in-the-works? Or is it just that we needed HTML5's features so much right now that we (industry, Web community) are willing to put up with the WHATWG/living standard process? Something is working… really well… that is undeniable.   

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
--  
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Saturday, 3 March 2012 15:42:38 UTC