The Web Standards Project (WaSP) Shuttered

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The Web Standards Project (WaSP) Shuttered

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday March 3, 2013 @05:47AM from the so-long-farewell-auf-weidersehen-goodbye dept.

hypnosec writes "Aaron Gustafson and two of his fellow contributors, Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth, have announced the closure of The Web Standards Project (WaSP). It was formed back in 1998 by Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman to get browser makers support the open standards established by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The project described itself as a 'coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.' Founded at a time when Microsoft and Netscape were battling it out for browser dominance, WaSP aimed to mitigate the risks arising out of this war – an imminent fragmentation that could lead to browser incompatibilities. Noting that '..Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality' Aaron noted that it was time to 'close down The Web Standards Project.'"

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congrats by noh8rz10 · 2013-03-03 05:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

they won. time to move on, find a new way to improve the world.
1. Re:congrats by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 09:09 · Score: 1
  
  They won? Really? Browsers are as incompatible as ever and the standards are an even greater mess. If anything, it's web developers who have started paying more attention to interoperability, but I don't really see the situation getting any better in principle.
2. Re:congrats by otuz · 2013-03-03 13:42 · Score: 2
  
  No, browsers nowadays are the least incompatible ever, and it becomes better year by year, when outdated IE versions drop off the considerable target lists. Getting rid of IE 6 was one of the greatest milestones of a decade, soon to be followed by IE 7 and IE 8.
3. Re:congrats by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 04:30 · Score: 0
  
  You are forgetting Google, who deliberately create shitloads of new, incompatible APIs & co, and do massive advertising, to kill off Firefox
  So exactly what Microsoft did, to fuck up the browser market back then.
  Watch them hiring Firefox developers in 3... 2... 1...
does that mean ACID4 is cancelled? by Trepidity · 2013-03-03 05:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

The Web Standards Project is the organization that put together the ACID, ACID2, and ACID3 browser-compatibility tests. There has been talk for some time of an ACID4 in development. Will that be done via some other group, or is it canned?

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1. Re:does that mean ACID4 is cancelled? by AaronGustafson · 2013-03-03 07:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  We were hoping ACID4 would come together under our leadership, but we could not get it to materialize.
2. Re:does that mean ACID4 is cancelled? by BZ · 2013-03-03 15:08 · Score: 1
  
  The problem was that ACID3 ended up testing a bunch of things that ranged from irrelevant to actively bad for the web, so it actually made the web worse in a number of ways.
  This considerably soured people on an ACID4, unfortunately.... Getting it to happen will involve finding a way to pick the set of things to test that avoids the mistakes of ACID3.
3. Re:does that mean ACID4 is cancelled? by drinkypoo · 2013-03-04 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  We were hoping ACID4 would come together under our leadership, but we could not get it to materialize.
  What would you say was the basic problem?
  Sorry. I literally couldn't resist.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

The Mobile Web Standards Project. Right now, the standard is WebKit. That's not good for the future of the mobile web. Mozilla and even Microsoft have important roles to play. We've seen before that homogeneity is bad for the web, and we should not let it happen to the mobile web.
1. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by davester666 · 2013-03-03 06:44 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  What exactly do MS and Mozilla bring to the web that they can't do within WebKit? They can have different Javascript engines, implement different UI, have different 'extensions' to HTML [attributes, elements, css features, etc].
  Homogeneity is NOT bad for the web. Having developers need to test their site on a bazillion different browsers is NOT a good thing. Having users switch from one browser to another, and have the same page do slightly different things or work slightly differently is NOT a good thing.
  What WAS bad was having a single company intentionally implement their so-called web browser so it worked differently from everyone else's and even against the standard at the time.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
2. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 07:29 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Developers rarely intentionally write web pages so that they follow the standard, they just aim for that it works on web browsers. Standards-compliant website most likely looks good on all web browsers that follow the standards.
  If there's just one web browser engine, websites will start to rely on the behavior of exactly that engine. If there's any ambiguity in the displayed data, the page can break horribly if some other engine tries to display it.
  As an example from another field, Microsoft's Office has reached such monopoly that some documents rely on the rounding errors of floating point calculations. This happens quite easily if you try to squeeze something to fit exactly one page. A "page" is not defined in the data format and pagination is done dynamically, so even small differences in rounding can lead to the document layout breaking. Users won't blame this on the writer of the document, they blame it on the program they use.
3. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 07:48 · Score: 0
  
  What in gods name are you on about?
  It was the fault of Mozilla for not getting in to the browser market quick enough.
  But they are now and they have got quite a few people on-board.
  How well that goes is another question. It is Mozilla.
  Microsoft are already in the market, but are crashing horribly because:
  1) It is Microsoft
  2) they also never make products for any other OS these days outside of a few of their larger products
  Which is a shame because WP7 wasn't that bad.
  Their design works well on a phone (which is why they stupidly thought it would be good on an PC OS)
4. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by thetoadwarrior · 2013-03-03 08:37 · Score: 1
  
  And when webkit goes bad or dies off we're just going to re-write everything? Writing to standards and not relying on homogeneity is the only real option for the web.
5. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 08:40 · Score: 0
  
  Problem is no browser follows exactly the standards, and as you point with Office every browser has bugs in it. So if you markup your page following the standards alone it won't render properly anywhere. You end up going back and rewriting some of the styling and scripting to either not use stuff that expose bugs or using browser-specific kludges to get around the bugs.
  If all browsers use the same engine, at least we don't have to spend days testing pages with umpteen different browsers and getting around gumpteen bugs. And if one engine is used, wouldn't that become the de-facto standard? The trick is that the engine must be open-sourced (unlike MS Office), so that it's not controlled by a single commercial company and that bugs can be fixed by anyone at the RC stage.
  
  Developers rarely intentionally write web pages so that they follow the standard, they just aim for that it works on web browsers.
  Yes and no. Good developers have read and memorized most of the standard and write code accordingly, but for testing we just try it on browsers and see if it works. We only go back to the standard if we can't figure out why something's breaking. Sure you can validate the code, but that won't tell you whether an element is improperly positioned because you misunderstood the meaning of "margin" or the browsers are not interpreting the value properly.
6. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 09:01 · Score: 0
  
  It will actually be a bad thing if Webkit is the standard. It means everyone else has NO role to play, and can be ignored, because it's, well, the standard.
  If we're all going to just rely on Webkit, and not give a toss what other browsers there are, then we should all just say so and let Mozilla and everyone else call it a day and give up on the Web.
  Don't worry, a new Mozilla will roll around once we've learned our lesson again, that it's not viable to rely on a single codebase as the standard for something as vast as open-ended as the web.
7. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by TeXMaster · 2013-03-03 09:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Problem is no browser follows exactly the standards, and as you point with Office every browser has bugs in it. So if you markup your page following the standards alone it won't render properly anywhere. You end up going back and rewriting some of the styling and scripting to either not use stuff that expose bugs or using browser-specific kludges to get around the bugs.
  If all browsers use the same engine, at least we don't have to spend days testing pages with umpteen different browsers and getting around gumpteen bugs. And if one engine is used, wouldn't that become the de-facto standard? The trick is that the engine must be open-sourced (unlike MS Office), so that it's not controlled by a single commercial company and that bugs can be fixed by anyone at the RC stage.
  
  The problem is that, with that kind of attitude, rendering issues in browsers will never be fixed. Even if the rendering engine is crap, and the standard claims a different (more sensible, more functional, whatever) behavior, with a single rendering engine used as the de facto standard, it would never get fixed. Unsurprisingly, whenever one reports a rendering bug, the first question that gets asked is: does it work in other engines? Luckily, we still have at least three major engines (the fourth, Presto, has only been recently abandoned), so we can still compare and see which engines are wrong in implementing that specific part of the standard, and which are not. Without these multitude of implementations, one of the primary motivation in fixing bugs disappears.
  Monocultures are bad. Regardless of whether they're open-source or not.
  
  --
  "I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
8. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 09:30 · Score: 0
  
  What WAS bad was having a single company intentionally implement their so-called web browser so it worked differently from everyone else's and even against the standard at the time.
  you forgot to mention "and ensure it only works on one platform"
9. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is that, with that kind of attitude, rendering issues in browsers will never be fixed. Even if the rendering engine is crap, and the standard claims a different (more sensible, more functional, whatever) behavior, with a single rendering engine used as the de facto standard, it would never get fixed.
  Not sure how much web development you've done, but it's borderline ridiculous to mention "functionality" in the context of web technology. It's one kludge on top of another. Forms is kludge built on top of hypertext markup, cookies are a kludge to create state-full sessions, Javascript is a kludge to enhance form's functionality, HTTPRequest is a kludge to add more client-server functionality, supposedly CSS was written carefully yet they forgot about the very common "divide a section of the page into x columns" so we had to kludge it with floating DIVs. How long did it take to fix the "bug" of not having support for columns in HTML?
  
  Monocultures are bad. Regardless of whether they're open-source or not.
  Isn't a standard itself a monoculture, by definition?
10. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 10:29 · Score: 0
  
  Okay, I call bullshit on this and I will give you a specific example - Android Chrome WILL NOT play a video in a secured folder (https with authorization/authentication), all other browsers will - and I tested with many including Chrome on the desktop, Mobile Safari, etc. Specifically Firefox for Android on the SAME PHONE will play the video!
  It is STILL valuable having multiple implementations for us developers - it makes it easier to find out if it is an implementation issue (the browser) or if it is a code issue (the site). The W3C itself requires at least two implementations to make the standard.
  Testing in multiple browsers is what us developers DO.
11. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by RabidReindeer · 2013-03-03 10:29 · Score: 2
  
  Developers rarely intentionally write web pages so that they follow the standard, they just aim for that it works on web browsers.
  I must be an exception, then. I'm not very good at the artistic aspect of web page design. My speciality is the back-end. Since I'm not dealing with the in-and-out quirks of browsers and web pages every day, I don't have them memorized and I do my work by referencing the standards documents. Then and only then do I start tweaking for browsers.
12. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 18:41 · Score: 0
  
  Isn't a standard itself a monoculture, by definition?
  Quite the opposite! Monoculture refers to the same program behind everything, standard refers to many programs behind everything by using the same interface. You know, like an API?
13. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by gl4ss · 2013-03-03 21:20 · Score: 1
  
  the problem with the "I'll write to standards and not implementation!" is that your sites will not work and people visiting them will bitch and your clients will bitch.
  it's not unique to web development either.
  the standards bodies are just groups of people who said that they'll be a standards body, too.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
14. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by davester666 · 2013-03-03 21:29 · Score: 2
  
  It's open source. It only 'dies' if everybody stops using it, or everybody takes their own private branch and stops taking/submitting fixes to the project.
  And webkit is only a part of a browser. Chrome and Safari are both based on it, but look, work and implement a different set of features. Opera's new browser based on webkit will have a third set of features, different from both Chrome and Safari. If everyone were to switch tomorrow to using it, we'd still have to test our work in each browser to make sure it still works properly in each one.
  Homogeneity would (IMHO) help, assuming it is standards based. If you can go "I tried it in the browser, and the browser works to the standard, and my stuff didn't work right", then you can go "I need to fix my work" [bugs in the browser notwithstanding].
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
15. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by devent · 2013-03-04 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with web developer is that you want your page pixel perfect.
  That was never the indented purpose of HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS make only "wishes", how you want it to be rendered and lay out, not how it shall look like. It was a big mistake to add in CSS absolute units like px.
  HTML was always a device-neutral format. The web page should put together a markup of the structure of the page, that can be rendered differently on different output devices. Device-neutral can easily be achieved by using relative units like pt, em or %.
  Do not assume that every user can see your 800x600 page, many users have different screen resolutions. And if you "optimize" your site for one resolution, it will look crap on bigger/smaller monitors.
  Furthermore, do not assume that I will use your fonts. I really hate web sites that assume you have to use (for example) Times New Roman and Arial and "optimize" their web site to be rendered pixel perfect with this font only. HTML and CSS is not Pdf. Web developers should not assume a screen resolution, not assume that the users will use their favorite fonts or fonts sizes.
  I really hate CSS definitions like "font: normal normal normal 12px/15px Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;"
  Why fix the font to 12px/15px? Just use relative sizes: 100%/150%. Just use "sans-serif" so the user can use their own font. Or that: font-family: 'YanoneKaffeesatzBold'; WTF is YanoneKaffeesatz? Why do I need to create a new connection to a separate server just for your stupid font?
  Just a few example, where I think the whole HTML/CSS is moving in a wrong direction.
  
  --
  http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
16. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by tokencode · 2013-03-04 04:11 · Score: 1
  
  If you aren't intelligent enough to understand why a standard is better than any particular organizations interpretation of a standard, now matter why point I make you will still not get it...
17. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 04:44 · Score: 0
  
  You don't get it. It's not about what can and can't be done with WebKit. It's about what you will not be able to do because no competition means no incentive cater to your needs at all.
  In essence, we won't be their clients anymore (regardless if we pay with money or something else), but their slaves. Your choice is gone. You can't say no anymore. For example when you don't like what they are doing.
  The motivation to innovate, fix bugs, make it nicer in any way, will stop being part of the calculation.
  And all that will be left, will be how they can milk that situation (and us) the most.
  Why the hell do I even have to explain that to a supposedly grown-up human being?? ...a life-form with a brain the size of a soccer ball!
  You aren't perchance a slime-mold who became sentient, are you? Because that's the only way I can explain an inability to comprehend of that magnitude.
18. Re:Time to form the MWaSP by davester666 · 2013-03-04 17:18 · Score: 1
  
  For further insight into how webkit works:
  http://paulirish.com/2013/webkit-for-developers/
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Great work by Lisias · 2013-03-03 06:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm sure they will be remembered, but hopefully not missed! :-)

--
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
How did they get the acronym WaSP by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:19 · Score: 0

from "The Web Standards Project"?
Maybe they should've taken a cue from GNU, etc and decided that WASP stood for "WASP: A Standards Project"
WaSP? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Did they ever explain what the "a" stood for?
1. Re:WaSP? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:40 · Score: 0
  
  Awesome
2. Re:WaSP? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:51 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  it stood for "our acronym wouldn't be as cool without it"
3. Re:WaSP? by Maritz · 2013-03-03 07:06 · Score: 1
  
  Was going to ask this. What's going on in that acronym...? Web stAndardS Project..?
  
  --
  I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
4. Re:WaSP? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 07:51 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  "We Are Sexual Perverts", "We All Smoke Pot," "We Are Satan's People," "We Are Satan's Preachers," take your pick. When asked directly Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P answered "We Ain't Sure, Pal."
5. Re:WaSP? by SeaFox · 2013-03-03 18:00 · Score: 1
  
  They could have called it the "Web Accessibility Standards Project" very easily.
  Except people would have assumed it dealt with vision or motor-impaired navigation of the web, not accessibility in relation to standards compliance on browsers so they can all use the web page equally.
Why the link spam? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:28 · Score: 0

Is there a reason that this article linked to some spammy news site that doesn't add anything? The direct link to the Web Standards Project was fine.
"shuttered"? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 06:43 · Score: 0

I keep seeing this word. I've never seen it before, but I assumed that it meant that someone closed the shutters. I thought that they didn't like the light or didn't want to be seen, like a shut-in. Is there something wrong with the word "closed"?
1. Re:"shuttered"? by oodaloop · 2013-03-03 07:29 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  It'll probably be one of your vocabulary words in high school. Grown ups use this word a lot!
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
2. Re:"shuttered"? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 07:41 · Score: 0
  
  I keep seeing this word. I've never seen it before,
  
  Well, have you seen 'this word' or not? FFS people want to know
3. Re:"shuttered"? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 07:51 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, it means closed or finished, but often in a more permanent way.
4. Re:"shuttered"? by gargleblast · 2013-03-03 14:56 · Score: 2
  
  I do not think it means what I think it means.
5. Re:"shuttered"? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 02:44 · Score: 0
  
  I keep seeing this word. I've never seen it before, but I assumed that it meant that someone closed the shutters. I thought that they didn't like the light or didn't want to be seen, like a shut-in. Is there something wrong with the word "closed"?
  In the olden days, people would generally close their windows every night, and open them again every day during temperate seasons (since air conditioning and the like didn't exist.) When storms or winter came, they would not only close their windows, but fasten the shutters over them as additional insulation and protection from damage.
  In some seasonal tourist destinations, this is still done. A beachside bar in might be closed every night after last call, but it will be shuttered during the winter months.
6. Re:"shuttered"? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  I keep seeing this word. I've never seen it before, but I assumed that it meant that someone closed the shutters. I thought that they didn't like the light or didn't want to be seen, like a shut-in. Is there something wrong with the word "closed"?
  In the olden days, people would generally close their windows every night, and open them again every day during temperate seasons (since air conditioning and the like didn't exist.) When storms or winter came, they would not only close their windows, but fasten the shutters over them as additional insulation and protection from damage.
  In some seasonal tourist destinations, this is still done. A beachside bar in might be closed every night after last call, but it will be shuttered during the winter months.
  More apropos of the article, a business that has gone out of business will also be "shuttered" by the landlord to prevent vandalism of the unoccupied property.
Filed wrongly? by mrbester · 2013-03-03 08:35 · Score: 1

Shouldn't this be filed under the "mission-accomplished" dept. as there's still a lot of work to do?

--
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
1. Re:Filed wrongly? by petsounds · 2013-03-03 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  Pretty much this. Do they expect web standards to never change again? There must be something else going on...lack of interest, internal politics, funding, et al.
2. Re:Filed wrongly? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 11:03 · Score: 0
  
  Surely politics. These guys were always political goofballs.
Encrypted Media Extensions by devent · 2013-03-03 09:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

Too bad the W3C is now working on DRM for the web.
Encrypted Media Extensions
It is not possible to have an open web and have DRMed content. You cannot give me the keys and the encryption scheme and to expect DRM to work.
Microsoft, Google and Netflix want to add DRM-hooks to W3C HTML5 standard
The BBC Petitions the W3C to Implement DRM for HTML5
It's just like Flash or Silverlight but with the blessing of the W3C.
Open source browsers and open source systems like Linux cannot support the Encrypted Media Extensions, without binary blobs.

--
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
1. Re:Encrypted Media Extensions by Meneth · 2013-03-03 11:41 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, let them have their fun. Then, when they're done, we can break the DRM in 2 days and have our fun! :)
2. Re:Encrypted Media Extensions by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 03:37 · Score: 0
  
  they're not having any fun, trust me - the failure of html5 to get anywhere is causing them real headaches.
  people don't want to go back to the days of 'This website is best viewed with [insert fav browser here]' and guess what - they won't.
  our fun comes from watching them fade even further into irrelevance ;)
Linux Installfests by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-03 11:40 · Score: 0

Linux installfests have gone the way of the Gooney Bird as well.
1. Re:Linux Installfests by tepples · 2013-03-03 13:58 · Score: 1
  
  True, GNU/Linux install fests aren't in fashion anymore, but there's a Linux install fest whenever a new highly anticipated Android device comes out, such as a new Galaxy S or a new Nexus product.
Agreed, but now on to semantic standards... by Paul+Fernhout · 2013-03-03 12:37 · Score: 1

For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_desktop
"To foster interoperability between different implementations and publish standards, the community around the NEPOMUK project founded the OSCA Foundation (OSCAF) in 2008. Since June 2009, the developers from the nepomuk-kde communities and xesame collaborate with OSCAF to help standardizing the data formats for KDE, gnome, and freedesktop. The NEPOMUK/OSCAF standards are taken up by these projects and Nokia's Maemo Platform. ..."
But, that is really just the beginning...

--
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Thirteen more months of IE 8 by tepples · 2013-03-03 14:00 · Score: 1

Getting rid of IE 6 was one of the greatest milestones of a decade, soon to be followed by IE 7 and IE 8.
I know exactly when we can expect that to happen. Windows XP is the last supported Windows OS whose IE can't be upgraded past 8. Once Windows XP dies in April 2014, we can assume Windows Vista and Windows 7 users are on at least IE 9. At that point, the biggest problem will become Android Browser in Android 2.2 (FroYo) and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Like Windows XP, Android 2.x's built-in SSL stack doesn't support Server Name Indication, which is essential for shared web hosting using SSL.
1. Re:Thirteen more months of IE 8 by KiloByte · 2013-03-03 14:51 · Score: 2
  
  Once Windows XP dies in April 2014
  Why would it "die"? I don't see Vista, 7 or 8 used anywhere but on laptops. At least around here, companies replace the buggers on new computers with XP, for several reasons (valid or not).
  They notoriously don't run updates (thank Microsoft for regression) so nothing will change when support is dropped.
  Let's hope Microsoft kills Windows completely (like it does with 8) before companies finally decide to move on :)
  
  --
  The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
2. Re:Thirteen more months of IE 8 by tepples · 2013-03-04 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  They notoriously don't run updates (thank Microsoft for regression) so nothing will change when support is dropped.
  A few high-profile cases of remote pwnership should do the trick.
3. Re:Thirteen more months of IE 8 by Grizzley9 · 2013-03-04 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  I know exactly when we can expect that to happen. Windows XP is the last supported Windows OS whose IE can't be upgraded past 8. Once Windows XP dies in April 2014, we can assume Windows Vista and Windows 7 users are on at least IE 9.
  
  While still over a year away, my large (75k) international technical company still uses XP on all laptops and just recently started a program to upgrade to Win7 and Office 2007 which will take until 4/14 to complete. It was just last month I suggested to an engineer/pm that they upgrade their IE6 to something a little more recent.
  
  We've used XP since around the time I started (a little Win2000 overlap I think) years ago and we will likely not move past Win7 till after my retirement even longer in the future. OS's have matured and there's not much reason to upgrade anymore for. Reassess in 10-15 years and a few MS OS iterations. /anecdotal side note on slow moving large businesses
Yes! Thank you. by sidragon.net · 2013-03-04 01:50 · Score: 1

And I hope the moderators come to their senses.
I've noted this before, but rather than just parrot my previous comments
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3457941&cid=42884767
Security updates will cease by tepples · 2013-03-04 03:19 · Score: 1

OS's have matured and there's not much reason to upgrade anymore for.

But have commercial off-the-shelf proprietary desktop operating systems matured to the point where they no longer need security updates?

we will likely not move past Win7 till after my retirement even longer in the future.

Windows 7 support ends on January 14, 2020. Do you plan to retire before then, or does your company plan to open its network to intrusion through holes that will inevitably be disclosed on January 15 of that year?
1. Re:Security updates will cease by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 04:15 · Score: 0
  
  With a proper whitelisted(?) firewall and a locked down "can't run everything under the sun"? You're actually remarkably safe from untargeted malware attacks. I regularly disable my antivirus on this old rig of mine if I'm playing games I've already played, and sites I trust not to have malware ads.
  By and large, most malware outbreaks that have happened are because of people randomly opening attachments or "codecs" they need to "play". Yes, they might use a privilege escalation bug those updates would have fixed to be harder to remove, but it doesn't matter -- your computer is owned regardless.
2. Re:Security updates will cease by tepples · 2013-03-04 09:37 · Score: 1
  
  With a proper whitelisted(?) firewall and a locked down "can't run everything under the sun"? You're actually remarkably safe from untargeted malware attacks.
  I don't see how a whitelisted firewall would help if one of the web sites that employees are expected to visit in the course of their duties ends up getting infected.