Fwd: [oiic-formation-discuss] Group effort

["David Gerard" <dgerard@gmail.com>]

oops, to list as well


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com>
Date: 2008/6/11
Subject: Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] Group effort
To: Shawn <sgrover@open2space.com>


2008/6/11 Shawn <sgrover@open2space.com>:

> May I suggest that reference to W3C, acid tests etc, may be pertinent and
> possibly good ideas.  But only AFTER we have decided what we are doing.
>  Referring to W3C, using Google Docs to help create an Acid Test, these
> things are IMPLEMENTATION detail for the group.  These are HOW the group
> would accomplish it's goals of testing IIC.  But we haven't even defined
> WHAT we are doing yet, other than a vague idea.
> I see this problem all the time in coding projects.  A customer may say "We
> need a web page", and the developers rush out and start throwing their pet
> technologies at it - PHP, RSS feeds, jQuery, etc.  But the developers forgot
> to listen to what the customer wants - they may need a static HTML page with
> a single image on it.  Making all the other effort meaningless.  I see this
> happening right now.


I don't necessarily agree. Capture all we can that people come up with
- and the point is, it's easy to do so. Everyone has a notion of what
interoperability feels like ("ahhh, this just works together and I
don't have to think about it") and what a failure of it feels like
("no, if you use that feature there it won't work in Nifty Doorways
6.75" "what? that's rubbish!"), even if they can't give you a robust
definition off the top of their heads.

People think of acid tests and so forth. Why? Because it works so well
for HTML and CSS. So it might here. There's no problem coming up with
such stuff if we understand it may not make it through - it'll help us
better define the question we're asking.


> I am seeing references to "IBM's" way, or "Rob's" way.  I don't know where
> the IBM part came from.  Presumably Rob works for IBM.  But I have not yet
> seen anything that says "IBM wants to do XXX", other than in rebuttals.


Rob's job is to herd this lot together and edit something together
that represents all relevant interests usefully. That means what he
says goes, and the check on that power is that the result must be
useful to all those relevant interests. And that's fine.

An assumption of good faith would be most useful to take here.
Starting with assumptions like "Rob Weir is only doing this so IBM can
take from everyone else" or "you're just writing for the Google-Sun
hegemony" or "Bill Gates eats babies, I have the court documents here"
aren't actually helpful in any way as working tools.


- d.