Re: First Draft of W3C version of URL Spec

On August 31, 2014 at 8:16:36 PM, Daniel Glazman (daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com) wrote:
> On 31/08/2014 23:41, Marcos Caceres wrote:
>  
> > The Editors of those specs have already expressed that they do not wish for the W3C to  
> fork their specs. Can the W3C please respect that?
>  
> So my question: I understand the three quotes above as "the whole world
> can do (almost) whatever they want with our work" and I think you're
> extending this to "the whole world except W3C", right?

No. You, and possibly others, are misunderstanding why those specs have C0. It's for at least two, and possibly more, really good reasons:

1. So anyone and everyone around the world can copy/paste spec text into blog posts, source code, books, etc. without asking for permission, needing citation, and without fear of legal action. This is extremely good for society for obvious reasons. 

2. If the Editor goes rogue or there is a loss of confidence in the WHATWG by the "Web Community", the spec can be forked without needing to start from scratch. This is a worst case scenario: it's a safety to avoid the XHTML 2.0 scenario, which led to the establishment of the WHATWG in the first place. So, it's basically a way to protect the Web Community from bad decision making. A fork is then open to compete on its own merit.

The WHATWG has issues, sure - all standards orgs. But we are not at 2 - hence the W3C has no business forking the specs. 

Hope that makes sense!

Received on Monday, 1 September 2014 02:14:56 UTC