Re: Proposition to change the prefixing policy

On 5/4/12 1:26 PM, Florian Rivoal wrote:
> In the cases where implementations and real world usage are ahead of the
> spec, then yes, it would limit the ability of the WG to make incompatible
> changes. But this isn't necessarily bad.

It can be quite bad.

Several WG members have indicated on numerous occasions that as a matter 
of company policy they are unable to propose something for 
standardization until they have shipped a (prefixed, at the moment) 
implementation of it.  What this means with your proposal is that any 
ideas they have, no matter how half-baked, would have to be dumped out 
on the web without a prefix before they could even start to bring them 
to the working group.

And it doesn't take a feature being "massively popular" to poison the 
well.  All it takes is one popular site using it for UAs to not be able 
to change its behavior.

> This doesn't mean that the WG would just be a rubber stand body validating
> de-facto standards.

I think this would be the most likely outcome of this proposal, given 
the interactions between shipping and initial standardization proposals 
described above...

-Boris

Received on Friday, 4 May 2012 18:03:17 UTC