Re: First Draft of W3C version of URL Spec

On August 31, 2014 at 10:14:28 PM, Marcos Caceres (marcos@marcosc.com) wrote:
> > > Hope that makes sense!
>  
> (TL;DR: intent and copyright/licensing terms diverge and it  
> seems to me WHATWG asks W3C to stop something that terms explicitely allow.)  

Just because you can stab someone with a kitchen knife in the face doesn't mean you should. 

C0 allows many things, and some of those actions are considered disrespectful, harmful, or just plain unhelpful. It's common decency that if someone shows you that forking is actually doing more harm than good then, out of respect, you stop doing that. 

I'll again like to point to XHTML2. Back then, it was necessary to fork HTML because the W3C was doing it wrong. This mistake was acknowledged both by the W3C, by shutting down that work, and by the Director in a blog post. Forking HTML by the WHATWG turned out to be a really good thing: it gave the Web Community, for the first time, a specification that actually describes the core of the platform. 

In contrast, forking the DOM, Encoding, XHR, etc. specs is harmful because:

1. the W3C is not adding any technical value: it's literally just copy/pasting. And it's even doing a terrible job at that simple task.  
2. the W3C process is incompatible with the living standards model (hence those specs won't ever go to REC without becoming quickly obsolete). This is *by design*. 
3. The reasons I stated at the start of this email thread.

Kind regards,
Marcos

Received on Monday, 1 September 2014 16:03:04 UTC