Re: formal objection to one vendor/one vote

David Singer wrote:
> At 15:40  -0400 11/07/09, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> Ian also took the opportunity to provide some insight[4] into his 
>> decision making process.  In doing so, he created an impression that 
>> he did so as Apple exercised a unilateral veto.  I believe that such 
>> an impression is unfortunate, counter-productive, and not in line with 
>> my understanding of either W3C or WHATWG processes.  In particular, I 
>> actually believe that the accepted goal of the WHATWG was two complete 
>> and bug-free implementations in 2022[5].  I do not believe that 
>> Apple's participation is required to meet that goal. In particular, I 
>> believe that there are at least three implementations today which 
>> could form the basis for meeting that goal, with required codecs, 
>> namely the browsers produced by Mozilla, Google, and Opera.  Nor do I 
>> believe that Ian has talked to anybody who can say with absolute 
>> certainty what Apple will or will not support by 2022, as I don't 
>> believe that such a person exists.
> 
> Well, in particular, Apple didn't ask for a change to the document as it 
> was, as we have not yet lost hope on finding consensus, which is clearly 
> the desirable outcome.
> 
> Editing the document at this time has caused a huge amount of 
> discussion, almost entirely overlapping previous discussions, and seems 
> to have focused on whether, or not, Apple is or should be, exercising a 
> veto.  I think it would be more useful to try to reach consensus.

At the present time, I am not aware of anybody actually pursuing an 
alternative to what Ian has proposed in terms of required codecs. 
Unless I can find an owner for Issue-7, my intent is to (eventually) 
close it as resolved.

>>  * Second, we have Steven Faulkner who in Thursday's call[9]
>>    indicated that he was intending to draft a spec, presumably
>>    addressing accessibility issues including alt text and summary
>>    attributes.  I'm hopeful that this will ultimately address ARIA.
> 
> I have also posted several times that I believe we need a substantive 
> discussion on media accessibility, and provided some suggestions.  We 
> cannot leave this area un-addressed.  Arguing about the codec (a 
> discussion which can be deferred without damage) and not about 
> accessibility (a design that will take time, take experimentation, and 
> take refinement) is not good use of our time, IMHO.

This is a large group.  Different people have different interests and 
can work on different aspects.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Monday, 13 July 2009 11:09:11 UTC