Re: Micro$oft decommoditizing things -- a solution?
On Sat, 7 Nov 1998, Steve Lamb wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 07, 1998 at 07:57:50PM +0000, Kevin Grant wrote:
> > to read the new style web pages). But remember that the Debian development
> > community is far larger (and faster) than M$.
>
> The one problem with that is not tat we can't code faster and better,
> but the fact that we don't define the standards. We code to the standards
> set forth by the IETF(? I'm prolly wrong on that one) as well as other
> standards bodies. Sure, we can code nifty keen things, but it won't be
> standard just because we coded it. Also, if we stick it into open source,
> as we should, M$ *still* has access to it to do as they please.
>
I've a couple of things to say on this topic. Firstly, *I* (for one)
would see it as comprimising our principles if we were to produce a
debianized HTML to work on a debianized browser. Linux has usually played
by the rules as far as standards go, rather than playing fast and loose
like microsoft. The Right Thing To Do is to adhere to the standards set
forth in this case by the W3C. One of Linux's primary features is its
ability to work with
Secondly, it probably wouldn't work. Microsoft can use its dominant
position in the marketplace to enforce de facto standards, we don't.
If debian produces a version of HTML with all these nifty features then
theres no garauntee that anyone else will pick it up and run with it.
Thirdly, we have to ask ourselves whether we actually want HTML with extra
bangs and whistles. There are plenty of people who are sick to death of
crummy webpages with blinking tags, animated gifs and silly java apps who
only use Lynx because they can get away from all that and still browse the
web. I'm bearing in mind the streamed graphics that Intel is using to
cripple your machine to sell you Pentuim IIs.
Fourthly, to a certain extent the Free Software community already *has*
extended HTML: Perl (probably) does everything whatever microsoft's
dynamic HTML backofficey thing is, probably does it better, and probably
did it before Microsoft had put finger to keyboard. Why BackOffice gets
more press and is used by more end user-type people is left as an
excercise for the reader.
Andrew Tarr
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate"
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