

Adobe's John Nack: Adobe is "sabotaging" HTML5? - bensummers
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02/adobe_is_sabotaging_html5.html

======
ZeroGravitas
Since the word "sabotage" is getting thrown around, here's some guidelines
from an actual WWII sabotage manual.

<http://boingboing.net/2008/06/11/sabotage-manual-from.html>

 _(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts
to be taken in order to expedite decisions. (2) Make “speeches.” Talk as
frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long
anecdotes and accounts of per­ sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few
appropriate “patriotic” comments. (3) When possible, refer all matters to
committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the
committees as large as possible — never less than five. (4) Bring up
irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. (5) Haggle over precise wordings
of communications, minutes, resolutions. (6) Refer back to matters decided
upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the
advisability of that decision. (7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and
urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might
result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. (8) Be worried about the
propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is
contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might
conflict with the policy of some higher echelon._

Slightly uncanny resemblance.

~~~
gruseom
I was going to post that I doubted the authenticity of this quote, since its
style struck me as overly modern and all the sources on the web seemed to
trace back to one talk from a 2008 conference. But then I googled the
document's apparent title ("Simple Sabotage Field Manual") and discovered what
appears to be the original:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/26184-8.txt>

Skimming around this thing is pretty interesting. They recommend plugging
sewage systems by flushing sponges down toilets. And here is part of how they
recommend setting fire to a factory:

 _To make another type of simple fuse, soak one end of a piece of string in
grease. Rub a generous pinch of gunpowder over the inch of string where greasy
string meets clean string. Then ignite the clean end of the string. It will
burn slowly without a flame (in much the same way that a cigarette burns)
until it reaches the grease and gunpowder; it will then flare up suddenly._

Sounds pretty authentic to me. Which makes the original quote all the greater.
It opens a new possible explanation for the inefficiency of large companies,
too: they're full of saboteurs!

~~~
jordanb
That document was written for Norwegian resistance fighters during the
occupation by Nazi Germany.[1]

You can tell from its reference to "Quislings", which were the collaboration
government (like Vichy France) of Norway at the time.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Norway_by_Nazi_Ge...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Norway_by_Nazi_Germany)

------
ZeroGravitas
You can get a better idea by reading some of the blog postings written by
Adobe's Masinter here over the last year:

<http://masinter.blogspot.com/>

They include an explanation of why HTML5 being specified too well makes it
anti-competitive, comments on why you shouldn't refer to HTML5 as a
"standard", why Google is cheating at standards by employing people to work on
them full time, and why irrational people hate Flash for no reason.

Basically it sounds like someone playing politics _really_ well.

~~~
illumin8
I read the public mailing list thread - starts here:
[http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
html/2010Feb/0349...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
html/2010Feb/0349.html) \- and continues for quite some time.

I came to the conclusion that Larry Masinter from Adobe did issue a formal
objection to the public list - this is quite obvious from this post:
[http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-
archive/2010Feb/0002...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-
archive/2010Feb/0002.html)

However, there was then further communication that took place in a private,
members-only list, where apparently this objection was handled.

What seems to be happening is either Adobe is innocently handling the process
of raising objections incorrectly, by posting them in a public list, then
withdrawing them privately later on, or Adobe is maliciously attempting to
subvert the process through delaying tactics.

I encourage you to read the thread and decide for yourself if Adobe is really
innocent or is deliberately delaying. In considering such things, I usually
like to look at what the parties have to gain/lose, as well as their actions.

~~~
boucher
Well, if you read what the gentlemen from Adobe has said since, his objection
on the private list was about how the chairs of whatever committee he raised
his objections to basically made a unilateral decision without discussing the
objections. So, at least according to him, the private list material is
essentially objecting to the process by which his public objections were
handled.

~~~
illumin8
Yes, but since all objections are to be made in public, in order to foster
transparency and documentation of the process, I have a hard time
understanding why making private objections to those same individuals that he
had publicly objected to before would help.

If the process is truly broken, get it out in the public and document it. This
reeks of the type of politics that is meant to kill something through
subversion of the process and delaying tactics. If you can't kill HTML5
outright, kill the process of developing the standard and you've effectively
done the same thing.

------
godDLL
Ooh boy, shit just got real: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
html/2010Feb/0439...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
html/2010Feb/0439.html)

> Ian Hickson:

> Since I was mistaken about the formal objection, should I prepare the drafts
> for FPWD publication now? What date should I use?

~~~
epochwolf
I can't wait to find out what's actually going on. I'm inclined to distrust
adobe. Their track record this month has been less than stellar in the honesty
category.

------
zarski
Adobe needs to embrace HTML 5 and start making great tools around the HTML 5
runtimes. Flash, the runtime makes them nothing. Yes, the build tools around
Flash, however, they need to stop their belly aching around HTML,JS,and CSS
and learn to embrace and profit.

~~~
fnid2
That they aren't doing this is why Jobs called them lazy. They are lazy. There
is no reason it should take 40% of the CPU to show a video in a flash embed on
a laptop.

If they can't optimize any better than that, how are they _ever_ going to see
success on mobile devices?

~~~
rortian
It's hard not to be condescending about this but this is super basic: Video is
hard if it is not hardware accelerated.

Apple refuses to provide a public api for this, so flash video needs a lot of
CPU time on OSX.

All cell phones that allow flash video will have hardware acceleration and
will not have a problem with it.

~~~
blasdel
Please don't parrot Nack's talking points.

Flash on Windows has only had hardware accelerated video decoding for about 6
months, on minority hardware, in beta versions of Flash 10.1. It hasn't been
released yet. No cellphones with full Flash players have been shipped yet
either, despite breathless press releases going back years.

Unaccelerated Flash on Windows handles video decoding just fine, and has for
years, with no special hardware or APIs available. It's squarely Adobe's
problem.

~~~
rortian
It seems to be the users of OSX problem. Window's is much more flexible about
allow the access to hardware.

I wasn't parroting talking points...I just have experience with video on linux
unaccelerated and it is not fun at all. The direct acceleration of video
decoding is relatively new but I'm sure the Android versions with use this
feature.

Thanks for info. Chill on the paranoia .

~~~
blasdel
Yes, hardware acceleration is nice, but the lack of raw access to it isn't the
issue here. Flash has always worked fine on Windows without it.

Apple's position is that if you want to decode+display video, it would be best
to use the QT API with the codecs they ship, and get acceleration for free
where available. Given Adobe's track record, they don't want them mucking
about in the bowels of the video drivers.

Accelerated video drivers were the number one location of kernel panics on
Windows XP, so Microsoft spent a lot of effort to rearchitect the system in
Vista, where it now causes a "kernel oops" instead, and the user just gets a
2s pause and a taskbar notification while the driver reloads. They took a lot
of grief from users over the slightly decreased performance and the transition
when their drivers didn't work at all, but it was the right thing for them to
do. Apple has not yet needed to invest in this.

The Flash plugin is by far the most common cause of application crash reports
on Mac OS X. Nearly every user experienced them, I used to get them on a daily
basis! Very few of their users have ever seen the OS X kernel panic screen,
especially without having failing hardware, and Apple would like to keep it
that way.

------
freetard
If anything, this debacle demonstrate that the process should be open to all
and public, not opaque as it is today.

~~~
Spikefu
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/>

Some things may be said in private mailing lists, face to face conversation,
phone calls, IM etc. but the actual standards, the objections and the decision
making process is all public.

------
sethg
Shelley Powers (<http://shelleypowers.burningbird.net/about>), who is quoted
in the post, has worked in the industry for decades, has written several
O’Reilly books about Web technologies, and used to be highly critical of the
way HTML standards development has gone. (Yeah, and now she’s on the HTML WG.
Veterans of volunteer organizations should be familiar with the “OK, if you
think we’re doing everything wrong, _you_ can join us on the committee”
gambit.)

If she says Adobe is not to blame, Adobe is not to blame.

~~~
simonw
Mark Pilgrim, who is not quoted in the post, has worked in the industry for a
decade, has written several books about web technologies and remains highly
critical of the way HTML standards development has gone. He says Adobe is to
blame.

<http://twitter.com/diveintomark>

I don't think this one can be untangled by deferring to experts - at least not
yet. There's still not enough information.

------
intranation
According to:

[http://www.osnews.com/story/22874/Teacup_Meet_Storm_pt_IV_Ad...](http://www.osnews.com/story/22874/Teacup_Meet_Storm_pt_IV_Adobe_Blocking_HTML5_/)

there's no sabotage, it's just how things normally "work" (for some value of
work).

------
nir
Reading the recent "Adobe Bad" threads is like watching HN lose brain cells.

Having owned only Mac/Linux hardware for the past 10 years I have my share of
Adobe frustrations, but all this bandwagon jumping after Jobs made a few
comments is ridiculous.

~~~
mbreese
It's standard backlash-backlash.

First, it was against Apple - "Without Flash, the iPad will suck. Apple is
evil for excluding it". Now, the pendulum has swung the other way - "Adobe is
evil".

Eventually we'll settle on the agreed upon: Adobe is only mildly evil. :)

~~~
illumin8
Adobe has been evil for a long time. Remember Dmitry Skylarov? Jailed for
writing software that Adobe didn't like -
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov?wasRedirected...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov?wasRedirected=true)

~~~
nir
My point is that it was never (or rarely) mentioned as such in HN prior to
Jobs' comments...

Generally I don't think any company is more or less evil than any other. Most
publicly traded companies pretty much do whatever they can get away with - and
if they don't do so now, their next CEO will.

------
devin
Forgive my ignorance. But could anyone link to or provide a brief summary of
what the general process is here? I'm not familiar with writing
specifications, etc. Any information explaining the process would be
appreciated.

------
TerminalDummy
I wouldn't blame them even if they did. Apple basically declared war in
deciding not to carry flash on the iPad. However, 'sabotaging' HTML5 just
seems like sensationalist tripe.

~~~
statictype
To be fair, Apple isn't really waging war on Adobe. They simply decided that
it wasn't in their best interest to support Flash on their devices.

The war is being waged mostly by the fanboy contingent

~~~
ThomPete
Isn't streaming video pretty processor intensive too?

~~~
potatolicious
Well, that's just it - HTML5 video will allow Apple to make whatever
optimizations necessary to keep power consumption to a minimum.

If video is wrapped inside an opaque Flash container, a huge chunk of Apple's
user experience is now squarely in Adobe's hands; this isn't confidence-
inspiring given the general stability and performance of the current Mac Flash
app.

~~~
ThomPete
There is quite a big difference here.

Adobe allows for interaction with the video. Apple QT is just that... video.

------
Spikefu
Simon St. Laurent has an interesting analysis and commentary on the whole
debacle: [http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/02/the-widening-
html5-chas...](http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/02/the-widening-
html5-chasm.html)

It seems that the whole HTML5 standards process was broken from the start and
is likely to remain that way. The recent hoopla is just some public airing of
the dirty laundry that has always been there.

------
carson
In the end will this debate really matter at all? So many browsers are already
supporting html5 features like canvas and the video tag.

~~~
Batsu
It depends on how you look at it.

If you look at it in the sense that some browsers support it and others will
likely follow, no, it doesn't matter.

If you look at it like IE6 supported CSS, it won't matter tomorrow, but in a
few years when everyone has to hack their site to pieces just to give a box a
rounded corner that looks the same in every browser.... well, it will matter
then.

------
GHFigs
Short answer: No.

Long answer: The W3C process is apparently so opaque that even the editor of
the spec believed it to be so. Rumor travels faster than fact.

------
pclark
Adobe seem really great at communicating with their users. Pity their products
have declined so much recently.

~~~
ThomPete
Adobe has a pretty large collection of products spanning a rather large and
diverse group of disciplines and therefore users and customers.

So are you talking about all of them or just some? How did you get to that
conclusion?

There is plenty of things that they don't do very well but that can be said
about more or less anyone else out there can't it?

In general as a user of their Masters Collection I am pretty satisfied with
how they allow my workflows to be optimized across the line.

That's what adobe is in the business of helping me with.

~~~
illumin8
This is why it's so easy for companies like Apple and Adobe to fight over
competing standards. You have both companies with developers that have years
of training and work experience within their individual content creation
pipelines. We call them "fanboys", but in reality they are just working people
like you or I that have a particularly well developed skill set and don't want
to have to re-train on a whole new platform.

I'm reminded of the great quote by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a
man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

~~~
ThomPete
I think that hit's it pretty much on the head.

I am not a fanboy, I am just semi-relying on their products and the workflow
opportunities it gives me.

Having said that if it seems like the discussion regarding apple/adobe has
much more to do with the implications of their products rather than the
products themselves.

