- From: Shelby Moore <shelby@coolpage.com>
- Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 13:28:49 -0600
- To: rayw@netscape.com (Ray Whitmer)
- Cc: www-dom@w3c.org
At 10:50 AM 12/16/2002 -0800, you wrote: >Apologies for a second response, I decided I should say more. I too will be replying more than once to different portions as I digest your two responses fully. [snip] >>That is how important I think this issue is. I think without it, the >>entire W3C effort will be undermined, because where the applications go, so >>goes the market share. >> >> >I agree personally that the W3C efforts to make content and >applications that can be viewed by any browser is being undermined in a >variety of ways. > >Unfortunately, work done at W3C is determined by the interests of those >who pay the membership fees and show up at the working group meetings, We also appreciate every member who is funding the valueable work of W3C. I am not a paying member, but am seriously considering becoming one if I feel we can get a good value for our investment (being a small company we don't part with $6000 per year without some rationalization). Off topic slightly on the issue of funding proportions, I just note that $6000 as % of typical small company revenues (such as us) is at least 2 orders of magnitude greater than $60,000 to the companies with greater than $50 million in revenues (per the published membership fee structure at W3C.org). No comment needed, just something to ponder, in terms of who is able to influence the W3C and whether that best reflects the democratic advancement of the art. Perhaps that is what you meant by "Unfortunately". Do not want to get you in any trouble, so I will reiterate that I am sure everyone appreciates the members who are paying $60,000 per year to fund the valuable work W3C has done to date. We would not toss the baby with the bath water. I have a pragmatic slant. >>Specifically what do you need?? >> >> >A significantly-larger number of W3C Members (or members joined together >by some organization or created group with a web visibility) committing >resources. [snip] > How about representatives of three >browser companies and three experienced application vendors and an >agreed-upon forum as a magic starting point? I am advocating that the initial thrust is to create cross-platform applications using W3C standards by leveraging a browser engine. Distribution (marketshare) of the browser is not as big of an issue, as it can be distributed as a runtime with the applications. Thus I wonder if support from one browser vendor and 3+ experience application vendors would be reasonable?? Application vendors are much more abundant than browser vendors. If so, then that is also why I am advocating that the spec try to leverage as much as possible the existing DOM (and possibly CSS but you have good points against that I need to respond to), such that it would be less probable for initially unterested browser vendors to have implementation issues when they eventually implement. In my mind, W3C application framework is going to happen someday, even if W3C is undermined in the interim. My goal (after programming for 19 years) is to avoid the pain of having to recode several more times, if the we first have to go thru another round of proprietary application frameworks. I am getting a little bit old already (37) :-) I have thought about GTK, etc, and I think the elegance of the Web framework is the future. -Shelby Moore
Received on Monday, 16 December 2002 14:30:18 UTC