Re: One reason why certification is important

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Alex Rousskov wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> > Microsoft has backed down, but that's not the issue.  What is the
> > issue is that the news article doesn't challenge Visse's
> > implication that Opera and Mozilla are less standards compliant
> > than IE.  I'm sure that if there was a certification mark to be
> > had, both the Opera and Mozilla development organizations would
> > seek it out as a defensive posture against such attacks.
>
> ... which would be a waste of time/money for both Opera and Mozilla
> teams since it would have no effect on MS behavior and on mass-media
> coverage. You do not really think that MS will never attack a
> certified product, do you? More reporters are also unlikely to dig and
> think just because there is a certification program out there.

Difficult to say.  Certainly, a certification program isn't going to make
bad journalism suddenly become good journalism.  However, if someone was
going to check the veracity of the implication, who would they go to?
The W3C has made it clear that they will not comment on the quality (or
lack thereof) of member products. If the certification program was
well-known enough (through marketing or other means), then MS would have
been inviting CNet to get a quote from that certification group.

> 	One of the primary MS goals in this context is to make users
> of non-MS products feel uncomfortable. The [certified] quality of
> non-MS products has nothing to do with it, and will not affect MS
> strategy much.

A certification mark would give the rest of the community a tool for
making users of MS products feel uncomfortable (at least until MS got
certified).

Rob

Received on Friday, 26 October 2001 12:04:14 UTC