Re: [VCTF] ID2020, United Nations, and press releases

On 2 June 2016 at 21:50, Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org> wrote:

> Steven, Manu, and others in the VCTF,
>
> This thread is no longer appropriate for this list.
>
> Please return discussion to the scope of the VCTF.
>

-1 on arbitrary censorship

Please give grounds


>
> Ian
>
>
>
>
> > On Jun 2, 2016, at 1:14 PM, Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/1/16 8:56 AM, Manu Sporny wrote:
> >> Microsoft, Consensys, and Blockstack recently made a series of product
> >> press release announcements that made it seem like the release was in
> >> collaboration with the United Nations ID2020 initiative...[snip]
> >>
> >> Here is why it's premature to make announcements tied to ID2020:
> >
> >> [snip]
> >
> >> To be clear, I don't think there was any malice intended at all - just
> >> unchecked exuberance coupled with a badly coordinated/cleared press
> >> release....
> >>
> >> -- manu
> >>
> >
> > A good heads-up about what they've done, although with respect I'll
> disagree about whether there was 'any malice intended'. I think you're
> being a little Pollyanna-ish here. ;-)
> >
> > "History recalls how great the fall can be
> > While everybody's sleeping, the boats put out to sea"
> >  —Supertramp, "Fool's Overture"
> >
> > I remember the leak of internal documents from Microsoft many years ago,
> now called the "Halloween documents". I believe this may be a parallel
> situation (their desire to 'control' self-sovereign identify now, like
> their desire at that time to control emerging aspects of the Internet like
> the open-source movement and browsers).
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
> >
> > From the above link, about the Halloween Documents:
> >
> > "Marked "Microsoft confidential", they identified open-source software,
> and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to
> Microsoft's dominance of the software industry,[3] and suggested ways in
> which Microsoft could disrupt the progress of open-source software.
> >
> > "These documents acknowledged that free software products such as Linux
> were technologically competitive with some of Microsoft's products, [4] and
> set out a strategy to combat them. These views contradicted Microsoft's
> public pronouncements on the subject."
> >
> > Two aspects of this I note particularly, both of which are potentially
> happening here: that they behaved internally one-way and gave "public
> pronouncements" that were different; and that they wanted to compete with
> and/or destroy high-quality technology that was different from their own --
> competitive in the worst sense, rather than co-operative. As the analysis
> linked from the Wikipedia page numbered [3] above says,
> >
> > "Therefore, for Microsoft to win, the customer must lose.
> >
> > "The most interesting revelation in this memo is how close to explicitly
> stating this logic Microsoft is willing to come."
> >
> > Links from the Wikipedia quote:
> > [3] http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween1.html#quote7
> > [4] http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween1.html#quote5
> >
> > It could be argued that that was 'historic' -- over a decade ago -- and
> this is 'different'. But in my opinion the Microsoft business model, its
> corporate culture, is unlikely to have changed. I'll point to what recently
> happened in the block of the Web Payments Community Group work in the Web
> Payments Working Group as evidence that this culture continues.
> >
> > See Manu's description of this event:
> >
> > http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation-antipattern/
> >
> > which included these sections:
> >
> > "2016 February – The months old Microsoft/Google specification is picked
> as the winner over the years old work that went into the Web Payments
> Community Group specification. Zero features from the Web Payments
> Community Group specification are merged with a suggestion to perform pull
> requests if the Web Payments Community Group would like modifications made
> to the Microsoft/Google specification.
> >
> > "Four Months of Warning Signs
> >
> > "The thing the Web Payments Working Group did not want to happen, the
> selection of one specification with absolutely zero content being merged in
> from the other specification, ended up happening. Let’s rewind a bit and
> analyze how this happened."
> >
> > Q.E.D.
> >
> > Steven
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
> Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447
>
>
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