Re: [editing] Using public-webapps for editing discussion

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Charles Pritchard <chuck@jumis.com> wrote:
> I don't think it's malicious. But, Google has unprecedented control over
> these W3C specs.
> They are absolutely using that control to benefit their priorities.

Google has exercised no control over my spec.  I've written it
entirely at my own discretion.  Various individuals have given me
feedback publicly or privately about the spec, and I've taken their
feedback into consideration based on what I think its technical merits
are.  The two people who have the most influence are Ehsan Akhgari
(Mozilla) and Ryosuke Niwa (Google), because they're the ones who will
be implementing it.  I don't give Ryosuke any more say than Ehsan just
because he works for Google.  Nor do I care more about Google products
than others, except to the extent that they're more popular or I'm
more familiar with them or the teams that develop them give more or
better feedback.

Just to be absolutely clear here: I'm an outside contractor working
for Google.  I have never set foot inside a Google office, nor do I
have access to any internal Google mailing lists or other resources.
The only time I've met in person with anyone from Google about my work
was at a two-day Mozilla/Google meetup a few weeks back at Mozilla
Toronto.  The only person within Google who has any direct authority
over my work is Ian Hickson, and he hasn't read most of the spec, let
alone told me how I should write it.  Google employees send me
feedback publicly and privately, but so do others.  The extent of
Google's involvement with my work is Hixie suggesting I work on HTML
editing, and me submitting an invoice occasionally and getting paid.

If you want to say that in the end I only care what browser
implementers think, that's a fair point.  But Google has nothing to do
with it.

> This puts non-vendors in a bad situation. Where Google has purchased the
> space to play both sides of the game, the rest of us are struggling to have
> our use cases accepted as legitimate. By funding so many editors, for so
> many years, they gained control of the specs.

Google has no control over the specs in practice.  Individuals do, who
in some cases are paid by Google.  I am not receiving any marching
orders from higher-ups beyond "write specs for browsers to implement",
and from what I've heard, the same is true for regular employees of
Google too.  If you would like to criticize our approaches to spec
writing, criticize them as the individual opinions they are, not as
part of a plot by Google.

> They use that position to knock-down use cases. When a use case serves
> Google Docs, or Gmail, it's heard. When it does not, it's shuttered.

Point me to anywhere where I ignore use-cases because of who presented
them.  (Obviously, except for the fact that I'll prioritize use-cases
that affect more users.)  I'll listen very seriously to what anyone on
the Gmail or Docs team says, but no more than Yahoo! Mail or TinyMCE
or any other major HTML editing developers.  The goal is to make APIs
that anyone can use.


All this is beside the point, though.  If you want more feedback from
W3C stakeholders, then you should be happy that I want to use the
public-webapps list.

Received on Friday, 16 September 2011 18:41:00 UTC