

Questions about the blocking of HTML5, informative answers from W3C participants - simonw
http://simonwillison.net/2010/Feb/16/html5/

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Maciek416
I saw it mentioned earlier that one of the reasons they keep they keep the
discussion private is to filter out general noise. Anyone who has been on
these sorts of lists before knows that it can often become very difficult to
conduct the business of the mailing list without having spammers, trolls, or
complete newbies stumbling in every minute.

To some degree, this makes sense, but I'm not sure why a read-only but
publicly-viewable list wouldn't do just fine. The whole behind closed doors
committee aspect of the W3 seems incredibly dated.

Spec committees need a reboot.

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fnid2
So then don't use a mailing list or make it possible for everyone to _read_
the list, but not contribute to it.

Why can myriad algorithms and websites exist that successfully filter noise
and the organization that is _controlling_ the direction of the web can't?

Use a forum. Use a upvotes and downvotes. Works really well.

The reason they don't do that is because powerful people don't want the world
to know how they subtly change the world toward their selfish betterment at
the expense of the rest of the world -- exactly what adobe is doing.

And it is in all their best interest. It's the same reason the democrats want
closed door meetings and the republicans do too. Because somewhere down the
line, that secrecy benefits both parties. If they take that from the dems,
they also take it from the reps.

In this case, if the other orgs involved in the W3C expose Adobe, then at some
point in the future when _they_ want something kept secret -- it too could be
exposed through the same channels.

It's a tactic of the elites.

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fnid2
Who makes the final decision:

    
    
       Ultimately it's the Director gets to decide
    

Huh? ONE person gets to decide the future of the web? Who is the director? Tim
Berners-Lee. Whew. I highly doubt TBL is going to let Adobe ruin the web. I
have a lot of faith in TBL.

But I'm starting to understand more how this works. Large corporations, like
Adobe, who want to be a member of the W3C have to pay $68.500 every year. They
aren't doing this for charity, they're doing it as an investment in their
stake of the future web. Here's the full member list:
<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List>

It's a veritable cornucopia of corporate and university elites. With that kind
of influence, it is no wonder that the process is taking so long and so held
up by greedy corporate motives.

$70k/yr is also a very good explanation for why they keep it so secret. If it
isn't secret, then what are these companies paying $70k for?

