6 ms·

W3C doesn't really have any real power over what happens in the internet today. It's browser vendors associated with WHATWG that draw the straws now.

by Woung1938 5y ago

EMM_386 5y ago
Yep, Google had already gone ahead with this anyway. > Google has already implemented both First Party Sets and SameParty cookies in Chrome 89, the current version, where they are included as an "origin trial" to "allow developers to try out new features and give feedback."
dmitriid 5y ago
Correction: it's the single browser vendor that draws the straws now. And it's Google. They've literally stopped caring about any objections to any of their proposals and just ship them.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Just look at Project Fugu. Google is putting the implementation first, the spec to "standards wash" their implementation comes later. And if WHAT WG doesn't want to play along (and why wouldn't they? most browser vendors are now downstream from Chromium so they get the implementation by default) they can just leave it in as "experimental" with a "draft" spec. W3C doesn't really get a say in this.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    Even the washing is so bad now, that it doesn't even matter: - The spec we're discussing was "proposed" sometime in 2019. Here's a comment from WebKit on March 27 2020: --- quote --- I notice that this proposal still exists only in a random personal repo. Could it please be contributed to an appropriate standards or incubation group? --- end quote --- At sometime they did move it to the appropriate group - WebHID that is now shipped in Chrome. They asked for Mozilla's position, and Mozilla couldn't even understand the proposal: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459 And this keeps happening over and over and over and over again. Their reaction when they are called out? When Mozilla and Safari flat-out refused to implement Constructible StyleSheets as they were spec'ed, Chrome still released them (because their own devs from lit-html relied on them), and said https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1220451799032877057 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1220451799032877057 --- quote --- We often lead, balancing risk/reward rather than demanding a particular point in an arbitrary process. Leadership is rather the point of having an engine team, after all. --- end quote --- That is what they call "leadership".
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    This isn't any different than most of the internet standard development. "Rough consensus and running code". Most of the internet-drafts and RFCs start out life as prototype implementations, instead of writing specs first, experimental prototypes are developed, and the spec is extracted out of the winners. People are acting like internet and web specs start life as a standards doc, it's iterated on until finalized, and then vendors start implementing it. That's very far from the truth, and I'd actually say harmful, as design by committee without real world experience often turns out terrible.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > That's very far from the truth, and I'd actually say harmful, as design by committee without real world experience often turns out terrible. Google, however, actively ignores a lot of input, including full-on objections from other browser vendors (who do have real-world experience). Designed by IE, sorry, Chrome, alone is just as bad.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      The difference is Chrome moves ahead anyway. This is why I'm calling it "standards-washing" -- if you take away the RFC it's no different from the browser wars era or Apple's proprietary CSS extensions for Safari back in the day. How the standards process is supposed to work is something like this: 1. Someone creates a rough proposal. Discussion happens. 2. Someone creates a proof of concept toy implementation. Discussion happens. 3. Consensus is reached, a spec is written. 4. Other vendors implement the spec. Spec stabilizes with implementers' feedback. How it now happens is like this: 1. Google writes feature proposal. 2. Google implements the feature behind a server-side flag. 3. Google creates training materials for developers to use the "upcoming" feature. 4. Optional: Google writes an actual spec. 5. Google either scraps the feature or makes it available without the flag. Of course they "gather feedback" and "ask for input" but concerns from Mozilla routinely get ignored and implementation progresses regardless. It's entirely up to Google and they'll ship it if they like it. The "standard" just becomes a fig leaf. This isn't entirely new, but the "standards-washing" gives it the appearance of being consensus-driven when in reality it's just more proprietary vendor extensions with marginally better documentation. Google has an explicit agenda of what the future of the web should look like and they're taking Chrome down that route regardless of whether other vendors agree or not. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but consensus-driven or "open standards" this is not. Contrast this with WHAT WG's promise in the early HTML 5 days: user concerns trump author concerns trump implementer concerns trump academic concerns. Google has decided that it is the sole authority on what users want and uses that to justify ignoring anyone else's concerns or objections.
pjmlp 5y ago
Given Chrome's market share, that is mostly Google. The irony that IE fighters are the same that helped Google reached their position, because "developer tools" and "don't like FF UI changes". Now don't complain, how is it again? Ah, Chrome is available as open source so it isn't comparable to IE.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Chromium is open source, not Google Chrome. And much of the documentation about Chromium and V8 is not public.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    > And much of the documentation about Chromium and V8 is not public. Nearly all the documentation is public... Private stuff is mostly accidentally created google docs where the engineer has selected "anyone within google.com with the link" instead of "anyone with the link". Anytime I request one of those documents be opened up, it has been done within a matter of hours.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Correct, that doesn't change the arguments that were being pushed around as defence why Chrome isn't IE.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Former V8er. We moved the vast majority of V8 documentation to public sites. What is non-public is mostly design docs, proposals, strategy, experiments, etc, i.e. the inner workings of the team mechanics. The technical details of V8 are not secret in any way. They may be radically complex, but not secret.
    - foepys 5y ago
      Keeping proposals and design documents private is essentially the same as making a project "source available". It prevents people from participating in the extension of functionality and limits them to being bug fixers. What Microsoft is doing with .NET is true open source where all proposals are being discussed in public with volunteers improving proposals and suggesting new ones.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
well I mean if Google shipped something in the browser that is now pretty much the only option that really helped their other business interests without getting standards imprimatur that might end up being anti-trust fodder.
- jstanley 5y ago
  Why do you think Firefox isn't an option? Firefox is great.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    for the purposes of anti-trust law somewhere around 3% market share isn't really considered an option.
    - Jaxkr 5y ago
      Firefox when combined with Safari are a formidable opponent to Google’s monopoly. The First Party Sets standard couldn’t be forced through because Firefox and Safari wouldn’t accept it.
      - ysavir 5y ago
        Until Google implements the behavior and applies it to their sites. Then Google services stop working smoothly on Firefox and Safari because the shared session on those sites is only functional on Chrome. Imagine having to log into gmail, calendar, drive, etc. individually each time. In theory it's not that big of a deal, but in practice could end up driving the casual users to Chrome since the tools they use work better in that browser, and ultimately they don't care which icon they click to check their email. And it'll be worse if other services decide to apply the new cookie strategy to their services, though they are definitely less inclined to do so than Google would be.
        Semaphor 5y ago
        Even Google probably doesn’t want to fuck over 33% of users in Germany. And considering iPhone market share in the US, the same might go there. And as a fun fact: Edge (12.62%) moved past Safari (11.24%) on Desktop in Germany.
pfraze 5y ago
Isn’t w3c where Apple primarily involves itself? Safari is important
JeremyNT 5y ago
Indeed, and an advertising company also happens to be the dominant browser vendor. We're quickly approaching the third "E" in "embrace, extend, extinguish."

W3C doesn't really have any real power over what happens in the internet today. It's browser vendors associated with WHATWG that draw the straws now.

EMM_386 5y ago

Yep, Google had already gone ahead with this anyway. > Google has already implemented both First Party Sets and SameParty cookies in Chrome 89, the current version, where they are included as an "origin trial" to "allow developers to try out new features and give feedback."

dmitriid 5y ago

Correction: it's the single browser vendor that draws the straws now. And it's Google. They've literally stopped caring about any objections to any of their proposals and just ship them.

hnbad 5y ago
Just look at Project Fugu. Google is putting the implementation first, the spec to "standards wash" their implementation comes later. And if WHAT WG doesn't want to play along (and why wouldn't they? most browser vendors are now downstream from Chromium so they get the implementation by default) they can just leave it in as "experimental" with a "draft" spec. W3C doesn't really get a say in this.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Even the washing is so bad now, that it doesn't even matter: - The spec we're discussing was "proposed" sometime in 2019. Here's a comment from WebKit on March 27 2020: --- quote --- I notice that this proposal still exists only in a random personal repo. Could it please be contributed to an appropriate standards or incubation group? --- end quote --- At sometime they did move it to the appropriate group - WebHID that is now shipped in Chrome. They asked for Mozilla's position, and Mozilla couldn't even understand the proposal: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459 And this keeps happening over and over and over and over again. Their reaction when they are called out? When Mozilla and Safari flat-out refused to implement Constructible StyleSheets as they were spec'ed, Chrome still released them (because their own devs from lit-html relied on them), and said https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1220451799032877057 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1220451799032877057 --- quote --- We often lead, balancing risk/reward rather than demanding a particular point in an arbitrary process. Leadership is rather the point of having an engine team, after all. --- end quote --- That is what they call "leadership".
- cromwellian 5y ago
  This isn't any different than most of the internet standard development. "Rough consensus and running code". Most of the internet-drafts and RFCs start out life as prototype implementations, instead of writing specs first, experimental prototypes are developed, and the spec is extracted out of the winners. People are acting like internet and web specs start life as a standards doc, it's iterated on until finalized, and then vendors start implementing it. That's very far from the truth, and I'd actually say harmful, as design by committee without real world experience often turns out terrible.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > That's very far from the truth, and I'd actually say harmful, as design by committee without real world experience often turns out terrible. Google, however, actively ignores a lot of input, including full-on objections from other browser vendors (who do have real-world experience). Designed by IE, sorry, Chrome, alone is just as bad.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    The difference is Chrome moves ahead anyway. This is why I'm calling it "standards-washing" -- if you take away the RFC it's no different from the browser wars era or Apple's proprietary CSS extensions for Safari back in the day. How the standards process is supposed to work is something like this: 1. Someone creates a rough proposal. Discussion happens. 2. Someone creates a proof of concept toy implementation. Discussion happens. 3. Consensus is reached, a spec is written. 4. Other vendors implement the spec. Spec stabilizes with implementers' feedback. How it now happens is like this: 1. Google writes feature proposal. 2. Google implements the feature behind a server-side flag. 3. Google creates training materials for developers to use the "upcoming" feature. 4. Optional: Google writes an actual spec. 5. Google either scraps the feature or makes it available without the flag. Of course they "gather feedback" and "ask for input" but concerns from Mozilla routinely get ignored and implementation progresses regardless. It's entirely up to Google and they'll ship it if they like it. The "standard" just becomes a fig leaf. This isn't entirely new, but the "standards-washing" gives it the appearance of being consensus-driven when in reality it's just more proprietary vendor extensions with marginally better documentation. Google has an explicit agenda of what the future of the web should look like and they're taking Chrome down that route regardless of whether other vendors agree or not. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but consensus-driven or "open standards" this is not. Contrast this with WHAT WG's promise in the early HTML 5 days: user concerns trump author concerns trump implementer concerns trump academic concerns. Google has decided that it is the sole authority on what users want and uses that to justify ignoring anyone else's concerns or objections.

pjmlp 5y ago

Given Chrome's market share, that is mostly Google. The irony that IE fighters are the same that helped Google reached their position, because "developer tools" and "don't like FF UI changes". Now don't complain, how is it again? Ah, Chrome is available as open source so it isn't comparable to IE.

29athrowaway 5y ago
Chromium is open source, not Google Chrome. And much of the documentation about Chromium and V8 is not public.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  > And much of the documentation about Chromium and V8 is not public. Nearly all the documentation is public... Private stuff is mostly accidentally created google docs where the engineer has selected "anyone within google.com with the link" instead of "anyone with the link". Anytime I request one of those documents be opened up, it has been done within a matter of hours.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Correct, that doesn't change the arguments that were being pushed around as defence why Chrome isn't IE.
- titzer 5y ago
  Former V8er. We moved the vast majority of V8 documentation to public sites. What is non-public is mostly design docs, proposals, strategy, experiments, etc, i.e. the inner workings of the team mechanics. The technical details of V8 are not secret in any way. They may be radically complex, but not secret.
  - foepys 5y ago
    Keeping proposals and design documents private is essentially the same as making a project "source available". It prevents people from participating in the extension of functionality and limits them to being bug fixers. What Microsoft is doing with .NET is true open source where all proposals are being discussed in public with volunteers improving proposals and suggesting new ones.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

well I mean if Google shipped something in the browser that is now pretty much the only option that really helped their other business interests without getting standards imprimatur that might end up being anti-trust fodder.

jstanley 5y ago
Why do you think Firefox isn't an option? Firefox is great.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  for the purposes of anti-trust law somewhere around 3% market share isn't really considered an option.
  - Jaxkr 5y ago
    Firefox when combined with Safari are a formidable opponent to Google’s monopoly. The First Party Sets standard couldn’t be forced through because Firefox and Safari wouldn’t accept it.
    - ysavir 5y ago
      Until Google implements the behavior and applies it to their sites. Then Google services stop working smoothly on Firefox and Safari because the shared session on those sites is only functional on Chrome. Imagine having to log into gmail, calendar, drive, etc. individually each time. In theory it's not that big of a deal, but in practice could end up driving the casual users to Chrome since the tools they use work better in that browser, and ultimately they don't care which icon they click to check their email. And it'll be worse if other services decide to apply the new cookie strategy to their services, though they are definitely less inclined to do so than Google would be.
      - Semaphor 5y ago
        Even Google probably doesn’t want to fuck over 33% of users in Germany. And considering iPhone market share in the US, the same might go there. And as a fun fact: Edge (12.62%) moved past Safari (11.24%) on Desktop in Germany.

pfraze 5y ago

Isn’t w3c where Apple primarily involves itself? Safari is important

JeremyNT 5y ago

Indeed, and an advertising company also happens to be the dominant browser vendor. We're quickly approaching the third "E" in "embrace, extend, extinguish."