Re: WSUI article

Hello, all. I was pointed to an earlier discussion today, and wanted to
provide some information.

> I haven't had a chance to have a good look at WSUI, but the
> paragraph:
> 
>   How successful they'll be remains to be seen since the W3C tends to
>   recommend only specifications that a working group of its member
>   companies has developed from scratch under its auspices. The
>   Cambridge, Mass.-based organization tends to frown upon anything so
>   prematurely described as a "standard," as WSUI has been by
>   Epicentric.
> 
> seems to be pure conjecture from the author; SOAP was not developed
> under the auspices of the W3C, yet it is a major component of the
> Consortium's vision for the future. No doubt the marketing
> departments thought it would be nifty to call it WSUI a 'standard',
> without understanding what that means.
 
> I don't think that the W3C is so petty as to refuse to develop a
> submision - if it has technical merit, and fits into the vision for
> the Web - based solely on such statements.

IMHO, the author is more pessimistic about the "W3C standarization"
claim. Any company - whether a W3C member or not - may issue marketing
statements that don't necessarily have a bearing on how things work in
organizations not their own. I agree with Mark on that point.

The Submissions process [0] is clear in what falls inside and outside of
scope of W3C. I haven't read the spec, so it's not clear to me whether
it falls into W3C's existing activities or not. The Submissions process
is separate from the Recommendation Track- what others might call a
"standard."  

I'd refer Darryn to the W3C Process document to understand how W3C does
its work - claims of standardization within W3C are difficult to define
as appropriate.

[0] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010208/submission.html#Submission
[1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010208/


WRT SOAP; SOAP was chartered as the starting point for the XML Protocol
Activity, and that this was exceptional, rather than the usual practice
within W3C. Note well that the authors of SOAP/1.1 do not make the
claims made in the press release, even after it was included in the XMLP charter.

Please let me know if you have other questions.

Best regards,

Janet





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World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Janet Daly, Head of Communications
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janet@w3.org

Received on Monday, 2 July 2001 20:14:59 UTC