Re: Proposition to change the prefixing policy

On May 8, 2012, at 6:23 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:

> 
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 1:49 PM, L. David Baron <dbaron@dbaron.org> wrote:
>> On Saturday 2012-05-05 15:02 -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>>> Properties can be shipped in unprefixed form once both of the following are true:
>>> (A) The appropriate standards group (most likely the CSS WG for CSS properties) has agreed to take up the relevant specification as a work item; AND
>>> (B) At least two independent roughly interoperable (though not necessarily identical in all edge cases) implementations are publicly available.
>> 
>> I think this is largely reasonable, except I'd like an opportunity
>> to reconsider taking things up as a work item, given its additional
>> implications.
>> 
>> There are some things where I agreed to let them be work items
>> despite the opinion that the current spec is harmful, with the hope
>> (as yet unfulfilled) that they'd be improved while worked on in the
>> group. [1]
> 
> If a harmful spec has proceeded to the stage where there are two
> independent roughly interoperable implementations and the creators of
> those implementations want to ship, is there really any way to put the
> cat back into bag by the working group speaking against a feature?
> That is, if Maciej's condition (B) holds, isn't the feature pretty
> much a done deal anyway to such an extent that it's futile to try to
> undo its existence?  Is there a historical example of a case where
> condition (B) was true and a W3C working group managed to purge the
> feature from the Web platform to such an extent that other vendors
> didn't need to implement it and could still successfully render the
> Web?

In fairness I'll note that this may end up being the case with WebSQL. Though the jury is still out, and it is used enough on mobile-targeted sites that additional vendors seeking mobile market share may in the end choose to implement it. Worth noting that it shipped unprefixed, in part because there seemed to be rough consensus at the time it was initially proposed that it was a good addition to the Web platform, and strong objections to it were not submitted until years later. Also, the vendors objecting to it managed to get the spec removed from the standards track. I am not sure exactly what point this example makes, but it seems like an illustration of attempted purging.

Regard,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2012 06:15:23 UTC