Stefan Tilkov's Random Stuff

Open Web Foundation

Dare Obasanjo on the newly created Open Web Foundation:

I can understand that a bunch of kids fresh out of college are ignorant of the IETF and believe they have to reinvent the wheel to Save the Open Web but I am surprised that Google which has had several of it’s employees participate in the IETF processes which created RFC 4287, RFC 4959, RFC 5023 and RFC 5034 would join in this behavior. Why would Google decide to sponsor a separate standards organization that competes with the IETF that has less inclusive processes than the IETF, no clear idea of how corporate sponsorship will work and a yet to be determined IPR policy?

+1.

Comments

On July 28, 2008 2:48 AM, dewitt.unto.net Author Profile Page said:

Hi Stefan,

You may also want to check out this thread on FriendFeed, and the public discussion group. There are a number of inaccuracies in Dare’s post that we’ve tried to clear up, particularly around relationship between the OWF and standards organizations. (There are a lot of IETF supporters and contributors among us, for one thing.) I hope that people take a moment to learn more before jumping to a conclusion.

Cheers,

-DeWitt

On July 28, 2008 8:30 AM, Stefan Tilkov Author Profile Page said:

Hi DeWitt, I still share Dare’s doubts (although I’m maybe not as radical in my opinion as he is). But if I look at the post from Eran Hammer-Lahav in this thread it seems that it’s indeed the IETF process you folks are unhappy with, and you are looking to create a competing organization. Which would be a bad thing, from my POV, as a) we have enough standards bodies already and b) the work produced by IETF, in my humble opinion, is pretty great.

On July 28, 2008 2:22 PM, blog.whatfettle.com Author Profile Page said:

um, OWF is pretty embryonic, but if it allows shaven mortals to openly publish specs at stable URIs in HTML/ UTF-8 with clear IPR process and without flying to attend BOF meetings, then I’m all for it.