Would it be the end of W3C standards as standards ?

The internet has evolved from 'de facto' standards to proper ones (W3C
or RFC).

The de facto standards were widely adopted because you could test,
alter, improve or just use them for free. You could do that because all
of them was supported by, at least, one open source software.
For instance, ISO and the ITU defined a mail exchange X400 protocol.
Very normalized well ahead of the implementation. And you had another
standard, implemented as the same time it was defined : the SMTP
protocol. Guess what is the one you use when you send an email...

By definition, a standard should be used as much as possible and it
allows compatibility between different products, open source or
commercial ones.

We've seen in the past the problems of having several non compatible
standards (remember the browser war ?) where software editors added non
standard features to a W3C standard.

In my mind, the W3C should stick to its core mission: defining standards
before any new technology is spread out, and it does it pretty well with
the XML specifications (SMIL...).

Otherwise, standards will "forks" and you will have commercial W3C
backed standards against free to use ones. 

I'm confident the W3V won't go that way.

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 03:36:41 UTC