In several recent posts, I've attempted to address how the structure of standards bodies, and their adjacent incubation venues, accelerates or suppresses the potential of the web as a platform. The pace of progress matters because platforms are competitions, and actors that prevent expansions of basic capabilities risk consigning the web to the dustbin.| Infrequently Noted
Working Groups do not invent the future, nor do they hand down revealed truths by divining entrails like prophets of the House of Iamus. In practice, they are diligent, thoughtful historians of recent design expeditions. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise, or invites you to try your hand at invention within a chartered Working Group, does not understand what those groups are designed to do.| Infrequently Noted
By subverting the voluntary nature of open standards, Apple has defanged them as tools that users might use against the totalising power of native apps in their digital lives. This high-modernist approach is antithetical to the foundational commitments of internet standards bodies and, over time, erode them.| Infrequently Noted
Mel Conway's seminal paper "How Do Committees Invent?" (PDF) is commonly paraphrased as Conway's Law:| Infrequently Noted
Relation of Process Document to Patent Policy and Other Policies| www.w3.org
Test a new or experimental web platform feature. Give feedback to the web standards community on the feature's usability, practicality, and effectiveness, before the feature is made available to all users.| Chrome for Developers
No one requires tech companies or open source projects to use most Internet standards, and no one requires people to use them either. This post explains why the voluntary nature of its standards are critical to the Internet's health.| Mark Nottingham
There are only two-and-a-half reasons to build a browser, and they couldn't be more different in intent and outcome, even when they look superficially similar.| Infrequently Noted
The TC39 Process| tc39.es
Chrome| caniuse.com
Blink (Rendering Engine) >| www.chromium.org
Some folks claim that Apple's mandated inadequacy for browsers and their engines is somehow beneficial to the cause of ensuring a diverse pool of web engines. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but to understand why, we need to understand how browsers are funded. With that understanding, we can see that not only has Apple has starved its own browser team of resources, but has done grevious damage to Mozilla along the way.| Infrequently Noted
