Rule breaking on the Web

I thought I'd respond to this, since it's important and it reflects an
unfortunately common theme found in some recent attempts to improve
the Web (e.g. HTML5 & content type sniffing).

On 2/20/08, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:
>  > Also, I have no pity for any Web admin who suffers harm as a direct
>  > result of permitting badly designed Web apps to be deployed on their
>  > servers.
>
> I guess that is where we are different. I try to protect the people that
>  are currently deploying websites. As best I can. Not just the people
>  that perfectly follow all specs and know all the latest and greatest
>  security recommendations.

By not following specs, they're not playing by the same rules that the
rest of the world has agreed to play by.  You don't change the rules
just because a minority violate them.  You educate the minority so
that they understand the problems they've created for themselves, and
appreciate the value in fixing their mistakes.  Otherwise, over the
long term, entropy would win and eventually kill interoperability, or
at least greatly increase the barrier to entry for new players.
That's behaviour I'd expect of monopolists, not Google, Mozilla or
Opera.

I fully appreciate that you believe you're doing best by the Web by
attempting to accommodate everyone, but you're actually doing quite
the opposite.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com

Received on Thursday, 21 February 2008 19:04:04 UTC