The web is a different problem

I recall the web originally as concept supported by a protocol to exchange information (yes — I’m old enough to remember the time before browser compatibility: we were just to read the stuff from another university)

Are Big Companies the problem by not accepting or implementing standards? Hmmm: too easy.

How did we get to this state of affairs?

10–15 years ago, IT directors decided that for security reasons, employees could not download or install anything. Microsoft obliged by locking down everything for users. (or maybe it was the other way around…)

From that day on, if you wanted to sell an app to a large market — read a big company, you had to sell it the old fashioned way. And hope in the end the IT director would install it.

But wait: there was a solution. Build an app with data on the web, accessed by a standard browser. Bonus: no more porting apps from one OS to another. No pesky IT director to sell on my app. Heaven on earth! (I over simplify — but that the gist of it).

(segway: I think there could have been other solutions — OS could have implemented sandbox that limited access on the device but let people install anything they want to consume web data is one example. Browsers would not I think have become what they are today — people would have gone on writing desktop apps/thin clients)

Of course we want to reach a broad market, so it has to work in all browsers, with all kinds of version. So Let’s ask the W3C to make sense of it.

Problem is, those Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Linux open source communities etc. can’t seem to get with the program. Where is that ubiquitous browser? Common guys, help me out here — be compatible.

But that may not necessarily align with the business objectives of those companies…

Sometimes I think the W3C is like the United Nations… With enough pressure (read demand), groups that would not normally come together will do so because it benefits them.

Blaming the W3C because the players won’t play ball is simplistic. The IT ecosystem is a mix of conflicting interests: Public companies try to grow and lock in market share, IT Directors search for simple homogeneous no-trouble platforms to manage, and (at least some) developers want to become millionaires by writing one script that will work everywhere.

I for one am glad there is a group of people who agree to meet and move standards forward, even if they come into play after many of the innovative solutions and problems are discovered and hashed out in proprietary solutions in various browsers.

The post I’d really like to read is: What needs to change in the IT ecosystem so that W3C type endeavors gather the support of all Companies who implement the standards?

Of course, if that post was indeed written, it might also improve the effectiveness of the United Nations…