W3C Launches Technical Architecture Group 55
jdaly writes "
In an effort to build shared understanding of Web Architecture principles, W3C has chartered and assembled a Technical Architecture Group - the TAG for short. The TAG will document cross-technology Web architecture principles, and resolve architectural issues. The TAG will conduct its work on a public mailing list.
Chair Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Cotton, Roy Fielding, David Orchard, Norman Walsh, and Stuart Williams join appointees Tim Bray, Dan Connolly, and Chris Lilley as the first TAG participants.
Of note to Slashdot readers (perhaps): Neither Tim Bray nor Roy Fielding are connected with W3C Member organizations. Instead, they were chosen for their knowledge and achievements - as well as the importance they have in technical communities.
Here is the general press release and the TAG homepage.
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[OT] Tey. (Score:1)
"tey" sounds quite cool, actually. However, just as we have come to need a gender-ambiguous pronoun, how about a singular/plural ambiguous one? "they" again ? once again, that solution devalues the original use of "they". Suggestions?
Re:[OT] Tey. (Score:1)
Re:[OT] Tey. (Score:1)
Even if I were a psycho fascist, a gender-ambiguous pronoun would be useful to me - what if I'm planning to have someone killed, and don't know what sex they are yet ? Hey, what if I'm a psycho fascist planning to kill someone precisely because they're not definable male or female? A gender-ambiguous pronoun is useful to almost everyone, even if they're decidedly not liberal.
Re:Bureaucrats (Score:1)
But I do know "XHTML.
I love this idea but... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's good to see this (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I'm heartened to see big names with good cred involved in the process. This is not a group of no-names we're talking about here; these are knowledgeable people with a solid background in the matter, and this can only be good for the future direction of these technologies.
Re:It's good to see this (Score:3, Interesting)
Since when have Microsoft been alone in doing this? Let's face it, it was Netscape that started this trend of proprietory extensions with their additions to HTML, and companies like AOL and Freeserve that are happy to try and provide gated communities that leverage the strengths of the internet whilst keeping users locked into their domains.
At least Microsoft is for once doing the right thing with SOAP [microsoft.com].
Re:It's good to see this (Score:2)
Just because MS weren't the original "bad-guys" (that'd probably be IBM in the 50s/60s), doesn't mean they're not bad guys.
Think about it - just because one murderer killed someone, doesn't make it O.K. for other people to do so.
Re:It's good to see this (Score:2, Informative)
Which would you prefer? A de-facto standard with several independent proprietary and open source implementations (e.g. Java/J2EE), or an "official" standard with 1 (one) fully functional implementation? (e.g. C#/.net)
Re:It's good to see this (Score:1)
>cred involved in the process.
True, but where is IBM? I miss them!
You are a disease, and we are the cure....
Hopefully (Score:1)
Buzzword alert 4 U (Score:5, Funny)
I'm On Track! (Score:1)
Whew. Thank gods. For the last 4 years, I've been working on a commerce appliance solution architecture.
(hey, it's Friday, give me a bre -- *thwack* )
-LunaticRe:I'm On Track! (Score:1)
Re:Buzzword alert 4 U (Score:2, Offtopic)
Surpised it took so long... (Score:2)
No independents (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from perhaps the w3c members themselves, there are no 'independent' members of any kind. No-one, for example, from the EFF or Commercial Linux/BSD vendors (are there commercial BSD vendors?)
Re:No independents (Score:2)
That is a somewhat bizare idea, it is a technical group, not a policy group. Danny Weitzner is the policy wonk at W3C, having come from CDT.
I am not aware of a significant degree of participation in W3C from the Linux vendor community so it is not surprising they are not represented. There is a big difference between writing code and architecture.
What is somewhat disappointing is the lack of any security architect and the preponderance of XML designers. This is not surprising since Roy was practically the only HTTP person nominated.
This will speed up adoption of XML-based standards (Score:1)
Good, maybe they will fix themselves! (Score:2)
and
Web page development tools that don't work - from the W3C [google.com]
Maybe someone will read thru these and make some recomendations to the W3C!!!!
Re:Good, maybe they will fix themselves! (Score:1, Insightful)
Or maybe, like me, they'll collapse on the floor in uncontrollable fits of hysterical laughter.
You poor, poor fool.
Umm I Think (Score:1)
Validator re-write required? (Score:1, Funny)
Let's hope they never have to conform to the standards - by having an end-TAG.
Re:Serious question from semi newbie (Score:2, Informative)
You should also realize that if you go on job interviews and say you can only write for IE you won't get very far. Some companies still use Netscape as their supported browser.
What's their position on RAND? (Score:3, Insightful)
Standards must be freely useable. If they aren't, then they aren't standards. If some body which calls itself a standards organization creates a "standard" that is not freely useable then they have simultaneously:
a) degraded the language
b) dishonored themselves
c) thrown into doubt all of their previous an future actions.
Has the W3C rescinded the RAND proposal? If so, then I haven't heard about it. If not, then they aren't a standards group, and if they claim to be one they lie. They were a standards group.
.
Re:What's their position on RAND? (Score:3, Insightful)
In response to public comments and the reaction of various member organizations, the W3C invited Bruce Perens and Eben Moglen to join the Patent Policy Working Group. They also plan a new draft of the Patent Policy document. This was widely reported, so I'm surprised you haven't heard about it. See this announcement [w3.org].
The W3C does not call itself a standards body. It issues "recommendations".
Re:What's their position on RAND? (Score:2)
Well first off it was never a W3C policy, it was a proposal from a working group. Under W3C rules a group of members can make any assinine proposal they care to.
The issue was rather more complex than presented on slashdot. In particular as Microsoft pointed out the Royalty Free policy was broken as it was written. The usual scheme in the IETF is that you grant an RF license to any user, provided that they don't exercise a patent against the spec themselves. So that bit needs to be re-written.
It may well be the case that the W3C cannot do any work on Voice-XML under an RF policy. This is the same dilema that faced the IETF with the RSA encryption patent. But it turns out that the patent holders are probably not going to offer even RAND terms so the point is likely moot.
So the likely outcome is going to be that the W3C patent policy will end up looking like the IETF one - which is hardly a great suprise. The W3C is the group that wrote PNG to circumvent the UNISYS GIF patent after all.
Technical Architecture from those who don't get it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Technical Architecture from those who don't get (Score:2)
Bzzzt...
Ted Nelson came up with hypertext in the 70s. So much for being 'first out of the gate'.
Until Tim came along the field had got precisely nowhere with fifty plans for broken hypertext schemes backed by database systems that didn't scale.
The hypertext community deserved what they got, they failed to deliver, Tim did.
There are plenty of failed hypertext wonks who will explain why their system was better than the Web, just as there are network architects that will tell you how great OSI networking is, and folk who will explain how they would have caught the 40 yard pass if they were playing in the superbowl.
If you think Xanadu is better than the Web then maybe you should wait a couple of centuries while Ted finishes it. The rest of us realise that having an 80% solution today is better than waiting forever for a 100% solution.
Too Late (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like another circle jerk with the same professional committee-sitters as you'll find on half of the other W3 boards.
Re:Too Late (Score:1, Interesting)
Good to see Tim Bray back (Score:2, Insightful)
I for one am really happy to see Tim Bray back in the W3C process. It's good to see someone as efficient, experimented and no-nonsense as him involved.
Plus of course as a Perl hacker, it's good to see the guy who coined the phrase "desperate Perl Hacker" (a target of the XML specification, the DPH can supposedly write an XML parser in a week) in a position to remind other W3C Working Groups that there exists indeed other languages than Java.
Slight correction (Score:2)
Discussion/feedback mode (Score:2)
Not to go OT here, but who really thinks the different OSS mailing lists are a better medium than a good ol' newsgroup?
This morning's $0.02
TAG charter (Score:4, Informative)
Re:TAG charter (Score:1)
Re:TAG charter (Score:2)
The only politics that should exist here is that if identifying any party that decides they want to play sandbox bully in applying proprietary extensions. The politics simply being the responce of kicking them out of the organization for not holding to the objectives of establishing standards that are there for everyones benefit.
I have no interest in getting tangled up in the sequence of characters that make up all the W3C is and has become. I don't want to hear or see hooks and lures trying to reel me into it.
But from outside of whatever there is, this is what I see:
There are those products that are outside of W3C need to be involved, such as rebol, or any other product that handles it's own details of what data it handles and transfers over the internet.
These thinmgs establish their own standards.
What remains, such as HTML and such products that make use of this is in need of compression. That is the determination of what such products are capable of processing and how, and then identifying the minimal set of integrated functionality needed to handle it all.
Instead of presenting "Recommendations", create that functionality in a generic programming language like standard C or Java. In other words communicate it more directly to computers, not thru the interpretation of numerious an disconnected programmers creating user interfaces and such, who are more likley to interpret it differently. As such the developer will save themselves time in development in using pre-coded standard functionality (no need to reinvent.) To apply this functionality thru a library or plugin leaves open the possibility to update browsers and what ever alot easier.
To really be an open standard, it needs to be GPL, where it would have the OSS force behind it and most important it would be an additional insurance that keeps sandbox bullies from messing up the works.
The FONT vs. CSS is a good example of creating bigger problems to solve a problem. The way to really solve such problems is to make the functionality that processes the data of web pages and whatever else, more versatile. Don't Break what is, but expand what can be. This way when a product doesn't handle an extension someone came up with, there is a default available allowing the data to still be viewable.
Things like Javascript, which is different than HTML, is just another block of functionality that has a way to pipe to and from....etc.
Open ended common code base is how to establish standards. But from what I can tell, most of the W3C current list of "recommendations" has yet to be implimented in a broad scale. Being open to developers to interpret and reinvent code, doesn't help. In fact it's a hell of a waste of resources. Not to mention the hell it causes those wanting to produce pages that are compatable across platforms an products.
This TAG thing..... clean up what you have before moving forward, otherwise the flooring will have alot of garbage under it from prior construction, making it uneven and the paint will have alot of grit and dirt mixed in.
It's not about documenting primarily, it's about establishing an open common code base.
Let me suggest that Microsoft knows this and is why it uses a dll that many application can tap into. Only it's code base is not open, or at least enough put competition aside for the sake of establishing platform independant standards across the internet.
Moderate parent up! (Score:2)