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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.
What does rope have to do with anything?
Because anyone who suggests an alternative, community-oriented way of doing things must be immediately discredited and comparison to hippies singing kum-bay-ah around a campfire was the best that the GP could come up with.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You've been asleep for the past couple of years: The WHATWG was formed in response to the W3C's slow pace on HTML standards development. After a few months of prodding the W3C took the point and subsumed the WHATWG's work on HTML5 (formerly Web Applications 1.0). The W3C has been making fine progress on HTML5 and CSS3 of late; whilst the WHATWG does still exist, it's only working on a handful of less-important specifications that won't impact the majority of web designers and developers.
As for the W3C, it's far from dead. If anything it's the WHATWG that's dying: none of their other projects have anywhere near the same community following HTML5 did.
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.
It is fine to argue with Jeff's software philosophy, his use of buzz words in his blog, or his politics. But he is not an idiot MBA who doesn't know his way around a PC. He is a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE (for his technical contributions in algorithms and computer networks). He was a researcher before he became a corporate exec (see his publications at http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/j/Jaffe:Jeffrey_M=.html/ and http://portal.acm.org/results.cfm?coll=portal&dl=ACM&query=Jeffrey+M.+Jaffe&short=1/).
Now I know why slashdot asks you to use preview mode to double check those urls....how about: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/j/Jaffe:Jeffrey_M=.html
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.
Jeff was *definitely* one of the architects Novell/Microsoft deal, and had been part of the leadership for at least a year when it was finalized. I know. I was there.
But don't let facts get in the way of your post.
Jeremy.