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W3C's Role In the Growth of a Proprietary Web

Posted by kdawson on from the slow-even-for-standards dept.

Paul Ellis writes "Mozilla's Asa Dotzler has said 'It's really hard for me to believe that either [Microsoft or Adobe] have the free and open Web at heart when they're actively subverting it with closed technologies like Flash and Silverlight.' But are they really subverting it? Where is the line between serving the consumer and subverting the Web? This blog post makes the case that the W3C's glacial process should share in the blame for the growth of proprietary technologies."

2 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Software rental by tepples · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The best defence with digital media is to get your monies worth from the content, then archive it along with an application capable of opening it.

    Some companies provide software as a service. If you stop paying for the privilege of using the software during any given period, you lose that privilege. Case in point: Microsoft has disclosed that it plans to offer Microsoft Office software under such conditions. If you were to create a project using a rented tool, how would you "archive [...] an application capable of opening" your editable project? Besides, how would you archive the operating system on which the editor runs, as well as the hardware on which the operating system and editor run?

  2. Scrollbars? by jwkfs · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Why does a webpage need to be able to screw with my scrollbar? Under what circumstance do I want the content that I'm viewing to be able to change how my viewer looks or behaves?

    I'm visualizing horrible webpages that want to make my scrollbar bright pink and install 'comet cursor' on my machine...