Re: [w3c/webcomponents] Alternative proposal for closed shadow DOM (#499)

Openness is the reason the Web is as successful as it is. If the inventors of HTML and JavaScript had decided to create closed systems, we would not have half of the features we currently use every day. We would not have any of the HTML5 shims that allow us to use cool new features while still supporting older browsers for example. 

There are thousand of innovations we all use every day built on top of the technology that get this technology to do things that the inventors never were able to predict.

ReactJS is an amazing invention. I don't think I could have invented it. The React object uses prototype to expose its functionality to users. If it were not possible to override the prototype of a third party component, I would not have been able to create this module https://github.com/dylanb/react-axe and this module https://github.com/garbles/why-did-you-update which uses the exact same technique I used, would not have been able to have been created either.

The ReactJS developers are awesome! But they could not have predicted the existence of those two (and probably hundreds of other modules) that provide value they did not see.

I have never once wanted more obfuscation. I have only ever wanted more transparency and more ways to look into and manipulate things other people created. For example, right now, I wish that there were a way to find all the event handlers registered on a page (without having to write an extension) because this would allow me to extend the axe-core accessibility evaluator to do things it currently cannot do in a cross browser way.

I wish that this team would expose the composed tree in a way that it can be inspected using the DOM API. I wish that the accessibility mapping information of all nodes were exposed to JavaScript so that we could write automated cross-browser tests to see whether there are accessibility bugs in UA implementations. I want more openness every day, so I can do things the browser vendors have not thought of and in many cases are not interested in doing themselves.

@annevk you can repeat your assertion over and over that your are not breaking the accessibility testing but that is not what @mrmr1993 has so far found as currently being discussed here https://github.com/w3c/webcomponents/issues/354#issuecomment-218723195

@andyearnshaw It is not worth sacrificing the future innovation around Web Components just so you can prevent someone using your stuff in a way you could not foresee.

I agree with @mrmr1993 that it is the inadvertent use of this flag that is most dangerous. As shown by some of the comments above, developers often think they know it all and they know better and they want to control the whole world. This desire, as shown by all the great innovations that have happened because of the openness of the Web platform, is misguided.

Firefox trounced IE because it was open and Chrome would never have succeeded in winning over the development community if it had been a totally closed system like old IE. Microsoft has recognized their folly and as a result, Edge is heading in a more open direction. Open systems win when there is free competition - always. Web Components will compete with other mechanisms for achieving the same things (like React for example) and if it is not open, it will lose.


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