Another Angle To WAP And Linux

An anonymous reader pointed us to an article running on LinuxDevices.com talking about Supporting WAP in Linux and why this should be a priority. WAP has taken a lot of (deserved) heat, but this is a good argument on the other side.

Comments

Re:What deserved heat?

[interiot]

A few articles that speak against WAP:

• Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox -- WAP Backlash
  
• The Harm of the Wireless Application Protocol (patents inhibiting WAP and some good anti-WAP links)
  
  • The WAP Trap
    
  • WAP - The Patent Problem
    
  • W* Effect Considered Harmful
    
  • Attacks Against The WAP WTLS Protocol
    
  • Underwhelmed by WAP - Impressions from the coalface
    
  • WAP Lash
    
• It really stands for 'What a Pain'
  

  
  
  The issues raised include:

  • WAP isn't patent free
  • Not an open standard ($27000 entrance fee)
  • WAP reinvents a large part of open internet standards, resulting in immature protocols with the associated security problems
  • WAP aims for the lowest common denominator rather than allowing for growth in mobile web browsing

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An alternative to WAP: IP

[X]

Key problems WAP addresses:

1. Wireless devices frequently go out of range. As a consequence communications are unreliable
2. A wide variety of devices. Wireless devices come in many shapes and forms. You need to adapt to these forms.
3. A wide variety of networks. This way you can access data regardless of the native network.
4. Limited bandwidth. We all know this one. ;-)

Now, I'm going to explain how the breakthrough technology of IP (Internet Protocol) solves all these problems:

Reliability: IP was designed back in a time when even leased line connections were unreliable, let alone the computers that were linked up to them. I would argue modern wireless communications is not significantly more unreliable than wired communications were back in the early days of IP. Furthermore, HTTP was originally designed as a stateless protocol, and as such, most "web sessions" are persistent for a limited period of time. That's right, I can pull out my ethernet plug, wait for 10 minutes, plug it back in, and then bingo, my Dell shopping cart is still there!

Variety of devices: Considering how many different kinds of devices support IP and even the Web, it seems insane to me to suggest that IP-based technology doesn't already provide enough capability to get the job done. Indeed, XML/CSS/XSL/XSLT etc. are all designed to address this issue. Indeed, before HTML became bastardized it was supposed to address this issue. The only thing that has kept the Internet from supporting a wide variety of devices has been market forces, not technological limitations. Wireless communications will hopefully balance that out.

Wide variety of networks: The original intent of IP was to bridge together a wide variety of networks. As such, IP can already be embedded on top of (and used to bridge) DecNET, NetBIOS, IPX, etc.... even itself!.

Limited bandwidth: Wireless networks today typically have 14.4kbps bandwidth, and those numbers are expected to climb significantly in the years to come. When IP was first being developed 2400bps was a lot of bandwidth. So, don't tell me that IP can't be used in low bandwidth situations.

The WAP guys have developed a huge set of protocols and technologies that mimic their IP counterparts. They've done this seemingly without considering how to use or extend the existing IP protocols to support their needs. I think it's pretty clear why this is happening.

Support everything.

[Spudley]

Some people will say that you shouldn't support WAP because of it's shortcomings. I would argue against that viewpoint.

An OS (ie Linux) should be able to support as many protocols/standards/etc as possible of each type. The ideal is for people to be able to choose each aspect of their system, without it breaking other parts, or requiring X so I can use Y. Everything should be as interchangable as possible.

WAP should be supported simply because it's there. You don't have to use it; just accept that it's there. That way, everyone can see it and try it, and the same for any alternatives that are offered. Then they can pick the one they like, or even use a mixture of them all. Interchangability.

The philosophy here is to make all the options available. If everyone can use whichever option they like best, and have the chance to make the judgement freely, they will for the most part use the best option. Of course, "best" means different things to different people, so you may still end up with several standards, but the poor ones will fall away, and the good ones will survive.

Why Linux?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

WAP is a userland phenomenon. Developers who target WAP vs. HTML vs. whatever, are developing in Perl, PHP, etc. -- this stuff has nothing to do with Linux, it's going to run the same whether they run it on a Linux box or a Solaris box (or even a Windows box, if a portable language is installed on it).

The real issue should be of getting the open source world's portfolio of web service tools to dish out WAP in a friendly and easy-to-configure way -- and getting it done, tested, deployed, and grabbing market share before Microsoft starts raping and pillaging that part of the market.
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