Slashdot Mirror
Jeff Jaffe Named CEO of W3C
blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.
I have mixed feelings on this. While it's true that he does appear to be fairly biased against the FSF's philosophy, at the same time he also has good diplomatic relations with Microsoft (this could be a good thing). The reason why this could be a good thing is that hopefully (and this is a big hopefully) it will allow w3c to influence Microsoft more when it comes to adhering to web standards in IE.
Obviously this can go the other way as well, with IE imposing its standards onto w3c, and forcing the spec itself to change/adapt. Pray to RMS that it goes the way of the former.
good relations with microsoft. neither for their partners, nor their consumers.
and if ie imposes its own standards to w3c, we developers are going to ignore their standards. its simple as that.
Read radical news here
Microsoft apologist? please...
How does it feel to know that your arrival precipitated the death of one of the world's most important standards setting organizations?
This guy should be fired before he starts. Then the people who hired him should also be fired.
He's a clone of Bill Gates! Created by Microsoft over the span of the last decade to ensure Microsoft conquers the world!
Look and see: http://investincotedazur.com/en/newsletter/index.php?txt=act9129
*tinfoil hat activated*
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
...so why would they care anymore whether IE will ever be compliant as long as corporate IT continue to make IE the default browser?
How about we break away from the W3C and its strange policies and instead appoint a community-based chair with people from Mozilla, Apple, Opera, Google, Microsoft (if they would show) and anyone else who wanted to make a browser. I'm not really seeing the benefit of the W3C lately, and with this, why don't we just break away?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Given all of the link ins between the w3C and the corporations, maybe it is times to abolish it and start with a new standards body. One of the problem with involving companies like Microsoft in this is that they tend to try to subvert the process to keep standards from addressing needs, so they can implement their own proprietary solutions (like video in html5). Maybe it should be run by people who have no ties to corporations and who develop open source software only. Or why not allow the people who run it to be elected by the internet community at large rather than profit proprietary technology companies?
"Microsoft apologist"... is that like a "communist sympathizer"?
If Communism is a single, unified organization with both a multibillion-dollar budget and many experienced PR people dedicated to providing its own apologia, then yes the two terms have a lot in common.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The W3C is long dead already, the WHATWG is the way to go for the future.
I have had queezy feelings about the W3C for some time now and this just makes them even sicker. At this point, I would rather almost have the FSF friendly browser makers create a standards body that is, well, for those people that are interested in open systems and not playing leverage games with it.
I reminded of what became of OpenGL, when a cool little company tried to make a nice standard for everybody and instead the whole thing got hammered by a bunch of egos until it was more or less abandoned in mainstream Windows based 3D rendering.
Finally, I wish people could see that patents and lengthy copyrights are less free market than what we have now. You can say a system is free market when it is really a hodge podge of government subsidies and monopoly grants. I would propose that FSF people start calling themselves Free Market Services, and simultaneously label closed shops as Government Regulated Services, which is really what they are.
This is my sig.
If you aren't familiar with Jeffe Jaffe, just read his Novell blogs. They're full of the most buzzword-laden bullshit I've ever seen from a CTO who is supposed to know what things are about technically. He certanly wasn't fit to fill Alan Nugent's shoes. While I didn't get the impression from what I'd read that he was a Microsoft apologist (although I certainly wouldn't be surprised), it wouldn't be so bad if I had actually seen him write (or even type) two words of sense together.
I can't fathom how people like that get jobs like this, what on Earth he is going to do (conversations with Tim Berners-Lee are likely to be cut rather short) and why this is deemed to be news. It's just another nail in the coffin of the W3C to have an idiot CEO like this.
Fuck do you split your thoughts between the subject and the post?
So are you referring to IBM? Oracle? Intel?
Should be replaced by Chris Cross.
First we get Chris Wilson as the chair of the HTML working group, and now Jeff Jaffe as W3C CEO. Tim Berners-Lee is now going to focus on HTML5? He could have focused on XHTML2 and we'd have ended up with a better standard.
How many not-necessarily-desirable people are going to infiltrate the W3C before it becomes completely useless?
One more reason why W3C needs to be absorbed into a body that can stick to its mission.
This is terrible news.
His swan song even talks about the "great satisfaction" of working with "Inventive people who write more software patents per capita than anywhere else".
HTML5 already has big problems with software patents forcing it to exclude all video format recommendations. What influence will this guy have in W3C?
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
So are you referring to IBM? Oracle? Intel?
Those three don't seem to have the online fanclub that Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) seem to have. The times I have seen stories about Oracle or Intel or IBM misbehaving, there were not nearly so many people who came out of the woodwork to defend them or make excuses for them as when a similar story appears about Microsoft. But for any who do this for the companies you mentioned, I'd say the same thing applies (leading me to wonder what your point was). If you are suggesting I am picking on Microsoft, I ask you one question: when it comes to abusive behavior that does not benefit the public, is the name of the corporation really important to you?
I personally feel no need to spend my time defending a corporation that has large budgets and legions of advertisers, PR people, and lawyers dedicated to giving it a good public image whether it actually deserves one or not. I have no rational explanation for the motives of people who do feel such a need. I suppose some of them may indeed be astroturfers but I don't think that's a satisfying explanation. It doesn't explain the genuine "fanboy" nature of much of this behavior, and I (would like to) think professional astroturfers could do a better job than most such posts I have seen on Slashdot. Personally I think it's typical "us against them" behavior like you see among sports fans who root for different teams, and about equally unsophisticated.
That I don't mention Linux or GPL'd software in general here is quite deliberate. I don't know of any authors of GPL'd software who are in a position to force their software or their standards on anyone. The very nature of it makes that difficult if not impossible. Therefore, there are no such abuses like embrace-and-extend coming from this group that would require apologists in the first place.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
2 bad.
This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.
So I follow the link in TFS. And? I see a barely coherent rant about "evil enemies of Linux" infiltrating W3C - a bunch of links to that effect, but none to do specifically with Jeff - followed by the part that actually mentions him as the new "evil guy" on the block. The specific quote is "He was chosen despite his love for software patents", followed by 3 links. Of those, only two are actually unique (#2 and #3 are the same link). I reproduce them here, in order, for convenience:
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/02/21/mono-moonlight-novl-strategy/
http://boycottnovell.com/2010/01/31/jeff-jaffe-and-zonker-quit/
Now, here's the thing. Neither one of those even contains the word "patent" anywhere, much less in any citations!
Apparently - judging by the first of those links - the sole reason why they even speak of his "love of software patents" is because he dares to promote Mono and Moonlight.
When did they go threatening people with patents they refuse to even discuss?
So unless they are running a protection racket too, no not them.
How about we break away from the W3C and its strange policies and instead appoint a community-based chair with people from Mozilla, Apple, Opera, Google, Microsoft (if they would show) and anyone else who wanted to make a browser.
Who is this 'we' you keep talking about?
The W3C is a Consortium (that's the 'C') consisting of interested industry members. Right now, businesses who care how web technologies are developed have a vested interest in sitting down together and at least going through the motions of standardising languages and protocols.
The W3C might have democratic mechanisms, but it is neither a populist nor a grassroots organisation. It is, and always has been, an industry body.
I honestly don't know why Tim Berners-Lee decided that an industry consortium would be the best means to achieve web standards. I do know, however, that he chose deliberately and only after consideration. I suppose he hoped that collective interests would trump selfish motives and, if that failed, that other companies could be relied on to reign in the more egregious abuses.
It needs to be said that, in this respect at least, the W3C has been largely successful, but only in the way that standards bodies generally are: Through endless, awkward compromises that sometimes defy reason, and often with only reluctant support from the very people who developed the standards in the first place.
The W3C was born at a time when Netscape Communications ruled the roost, and acted like they didn't need anyone else. Virtually all of the abominations of early 'Tag Soup' HTML can be laid at Netscape's feet. Following that, we saw years of tug-of-war spec development, in which MS and Netscape defined their competing and incompatible implementations of numerous new elements and attributes.
But the W3C persevered and (painfully) slowly managed to bring us back from the brink to HTML 4 and eventually XHTML. There've been some interesting manoeuvres of late regarding WHATWG and HTML 5, but most interesting is the fact that the 'Tag Soup' crew and other unilateralists are more often on the defensive than in control. Much of that - indeed much of the conventional wisdom that Web Standards are Good - is the result of the efforts of the W3C and its members.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
bit annoying, isn't it?
The title isn't supposed to be the beginning of replies.
I know I've done it myself, but I won't do it anymore.
The headline should read:
Jeff Jaffe, Jefe.
parts of the most important standards even came from Microsoft people. They are not all evil, you know.
Particularly their box model. That's right, I said it. The Microsoft box model is actually better than the w3c's css 2.1 model.
With either box model, you have the equation ContainerWidth = Padding + ContentWidth. But under the w3c model, you have to solve this equation, every time ContainerWidth or Padding changes. That's assuming you're using units where this is actually possible. If you want to use relative units, you're out of luck getting precise layout arithmetic and in some cases totally out of luck (unless you want to add scaffolding markup and style that too, but since half the point of CSS in the first place was to minimize that, it should be a red flag that something is wrong).
With Microsoft's model, the browser solves the equation for you whenever any kind of reflow is necessary.
Fortunately, with the advent of CSS 3, you have the option to tell the other browsers to do this the right way. Use box-sizing: border-box;.
Tweet, tweet.
Yet more proof, if it were needed, that once you reach the CXX level there are never any consequences for any of your actions :-(.
Jeremy.
Kree Jaffe!
I love the smell of witch hunts in the morning. That guy wasn't a "key architect" of the Novell deal, he wasn't even part of the company's leadership when it was finalized between Hovsepian and Ballmer. What he did do for many years was run the openSUSE project. But why let facts get in the way? The submitter of this flamebait (because what does one call it?) is one of BoycottNovell's groupies. He hangs out on their chat room as "ender270" and is currently in the middle of a legal dispute with David Schlesinger, one of the members of the GNOME board of directors - who incidentally was also attacked by BoycottNovell - subsequently the proprietor "Dr." Schestowitz was forced to issue an apology for that.
But of course, his crime is that he dared work for Novell. For this he should be punished for all eternity.
BoycottNovell and the 12 people (including one of our past resident trolls) who count themselves as members of that "community" are the ass-end of FOSS advocacy.
you fucking Nazi!
The WC3 is getting a CEO that was the CTO at Novell. Crap-fucking-tastic!
Yeah this is the same idiot that pushed Novell in the direction of self destruction along with the Idiot of a CEO who is more then likely going to get a hell of a golden parachute when Elliot takes Novell apart and scatters it to the 4 winds.
While I used to only think that the WC3 was worthless, now I am completely convinced.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
ISO check
W3C check
[x] Used specifically to cause fear and hatred
[x] Vague enough to be supportable with only a few quotes
[x] Generally irrelevant to the subject at hand
[x] Frequently irrational
[x] Heavily stigmatized in the community
We may have a winner.
And believe it or not, parts of the most important standards even came from Microsoft people.
Yeah. And I wish they'd stay out of it. Have a look at the revolting mess SOAP is. They messed up WebDAV (locking, anyone?). They severely damaged UTF-8 (BOM? Ferchrissake!).
Every standard they got their little dirty fingers in tends to evolve into a huge steaming pile of shit. As if there were some purpose in it (but who knows -- it might be just natural evolution :)
As a developer I shall not set hand at those none FSF standards.
This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization
Those "copious links" point to other Boycott Novell pages. And the cites in most of those also point to Boycott Novell pages. If you actually follow all of these until you get external links, the external links don't back the Boycott Novell claims.
This is typical of that site. It will make some claim, sometimes being semi-honest and marking it as speculation or just suspicious, and cite an external source. Then, a bit later, it will repeat the claim, without marking it as speculative, and it will cite the earlier BN page, not the original source. By the third time, it is reporting it as fact, and only citing tertiary or later BN pages.
I have no rational explanation
Yes, there is much you don't understand.
Q: What are the most annoying thing on the internet?
At the bottom of the
Jeff Jaffe? Isnt that a character in Star Wars?
Looking at the bullshitter's past history you can see that he's one of the key people who fucked over Novell from the inside. It would be hard to find a more inappropriate choice that Jaffe. He is a software patent booster, Microsoft apologist, and long time opponent of Free Software.
Nothing good has ever come from relations with Microsoft, neither for their partners, nor their consumers. Having Microsoft's Jaffe in the W3C at the same time as having Micrtosoft's Assay in Ubuntu will make the quality of computing suffer along with the price, flexibility and freedom.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This is a great chance. Since he seems to be friendly to patents and unfriendly to the FSF, maybe his influence will lead to finally getting a standard video format for HTML5. One that is actually good, like H.264.
Jaffe krie!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. If they have talent, why did they end up at Microsoft and who, of all that talent, is responsible for the worst software engineering and production the world has ever seen? Please don't try that canard on us about "the management" holding them back. Again if they had skill and the management were that bad, they'd have left ages and ages ago for higher pay and better respect.
that HTML5 won't be a substitute for Silverlight.
I have no rational explanation
Yes, there is much you don't understand.
I believe I understand why this is the most useful reply you could produce. Your others in this discussion removed any doubt I may have had.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I have no rational explanation for the motives of people who do feel such a need
I think it's largely from people wanting to consider their purchases or at least choices in life as the best they could have made.
which is totally what she said