5 ms·

Sure they're free and open source. But they aren't STANDARDS. You seem to be unable to look objectively at the situation. While ActiveX was closed source, by

by dos1 15y ago

Sure they're free and open source. But they aren't STANDARDS. You seem to be unable to look objectively at the situation. While ActiveX was closed source, by extending the web with non standard technology the end result will be the same, open source or not.

yanw 15y ago
But they are adhering to standards as well, more so than anyone else for that matter, point to an instance where they're not. Also it takes ages for stuff to get standardized, are you suggesting that no technology should be applicable until it's the standard? I see no issue in introducing new cool tech specially if it's opensource.
- dos1 15y ago
  I agree, they do a great job following the standards. I love that. What I don't love is when they break away. That's my whole point - work with the standards body to get your new cool tech introduced. Don't just go rogue and do whatever you want, that's when problems arise.
  - yanw 15y ago
    "Breaking away" as you describe it sounds like innovation to me, and pacing innovation to standard bodies would kill it. I can't think of specifics but surly most of what is considered the standard today was once the experimentation of one company or one lab.
    - dos1 15y ago
      Really? When Microsoft "broke away" and created ActiveX, you were in support of that too because it was innovation? Or how bout Adobe and Flash?
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - statictype 15y ago
        ActiveX and Flash were certainly innovations. One of them didn't pan out[1] and the other did and lasted for quite some time. You realize that if not for Flash, sites like Youtube wouldn't have been possible at the time that it was released? [1] ActieX didn't pan out for the web as a whole - it fared well behind the walls of enterprises.
      - AlisdairO 15y ago
        If Microsoft made ActiveX open and easy for other browser manufactures to implement in a cross-platform manner, I would absolutely have been in support of it. They didn't, so I wasn't. Standards bodies move slowly. Non-standardised innovation across browsers is absolutely to be encouraged, as long as it is done in a manner that allows others to implement that innovation too. This sort of innovation is what helps us decide what is worth being made into a standard.
      - DannoHung 15y ago
        Maybe not ActiveX, but when Microsoft created XMLHttpRequest in their javascript engine, that ended up being pretty significant and great for how the web works today.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    What problems arise? Why should "standards bodies" affect what features Free Software has? Why allow anyone to release any software at all?
  - myko 15y ago
    I would agree with you if their breaking away weren't open sourced.
- marshray 15y ago
  The problem is when they run off and code something and implement it in Chrome, and then when design problems are found in it during the standardization process they say "well it's deployed in too many units already to fix now", effectively reducing the pool of outside experts in the standards orgs to a bunch of rubber-stamping copy editors.
  - dchest 15y ago
    Any examples?
    - marshray 15y ago
      I hesitate to point at examples because I like all the people involved and feel it's not worth making look like more than they are. But I do think there is some basis for the sentiment. So if you are interested, you could study the process by which the HTTP Origin header came to not allow double quotes. There will always be a natural tension between those shipping code and a standardization process.
- jrockway 15y ago
  I think people complaining about this are upset about the network effect, rather than Chrome adding new features. Say you love Firefox. One day, your favorite website decides to switch entirely to SPDY, and you can't use Firefox anymore. It's natural to blame Google for this, since they invented SPDY and put the client into production. But really, it's that site's developer's fault for using nonstandard features. This happens all the time; Firefox adds non-standard CSS transforms, Microsoft adds non-standard Javascript functionality, and Apple adds proprietary video codecs to Safari. When your web app depends on these things, you hurt your users. But it's your fault for using nonstandard features; it's not Apple's or Google's or Microsoft's fault for making their browser support them. If this upsets you, consider software in general. To use Facebook, you have to use Facebook. That's nonstandard! To use an Emacs extension, you have to use Emacs. That's nonstandard! And so on. Google and Mozilla are especially innocent, since Apple and Microsoft can easily steal any features they want from Chrome and Firefox. They're the only ones out in the open, and for that, I think they deserve to try new things for the web. If they stick, the other vendors can easily support the new features.
  - nudded 15y ago
    first you say "One day, your favorite website decides to switch entirely to SPDY, and you can't use Firefox anymore. It's natural to blame Google for this, since they invented SPDY and put the client into production. But really, it's that site's developer's fault for using nonstandard features." then "Google and Mozilla are especially innocent, since Apple and Microsoft can easily steal any features they want from Chrome and Firefox. They're the only ones out in the open, and for that, I think they deserve to try new things for the web. If they stick, the other vendors can easily support the new features." How would these features stick, if developers using them are to blame?
    - jrockway 15y ago
      By degrading gracefully, of course. It's why you can read GMail in IE6, even though the experience is a lot better in Chrome 17.
  - ootachi 15y ago
anamax 15y ago
> Sure they're free and open source. But they aren't STANDARDS. So? "Standards" only means that some group has blessed them. In particular, it doesn't imply that you're free to implement them. What can you do with "standards" that you can't do with those projects, as they currently exist? What can't happen with standards that can happen with those projects? Remember, no one is obligated to follow or conform to "standards".
- dos1 15y ago
  Wow, you're just being contrary to be contrary aren't you? While no one is obligated to follow standards, they certainly help adoption. Without standards we wouldn't be able to just buy a consumer electronics device and plug it in to our standardized plug with standardized voltage would we? Standards are part of our daily lives and without them we would not have progressed nearly as far as we have. Further more, the reason standards are nice here is because a 3rd party is the one who blessed the technology, not the biased producer of the technology. And changes to that standard need to go through the standards body and the producer is not the single owner.
  - cornell532 15y ago
    Your point is true, but so is parent post. Standards doesn't mean "no innovation". While the electric outlet may be a "standard" devices that use the electricity shouldn't necessarily be "standard". ie if I want an innovative lamp to plug into my standard electric socket, that is okay. Standards have a place and so do innovations. If Google is releasing all of their innovations which have broad applicability as open source projects, I see no reason they should slow down so that slow-moving, non-innovating standards bodies can catchup.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > Wow, you're just being contrary to be contrary aren't you? Not at all. I'm pointing out that they don't have the properties that you're asking for in this case. > Further more, the reason standards are nice here is because a 3rd party is the one who blessed the technology, not the biased producer of the technology. And changes to that standard need to go through the standards body and the producer is not the single owner. Suppose that Google submitted all of those projects to a standards body, got them approved, and then made an incompatible change to their implementations. How does their status as a standard matter?
wycats 15y ago
They are proposed standards. See my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456815 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456815. Standards don't appear out of the ether, fully formed and ready to be implemented. Properly developed standards are built precisely the way Google is building them: with a publicly available proposal and a reference implementation in widely used software.

by dos1 15y ago

yanw 15y ago

But they are adhering to standards as well, more so than anyone else for that matter, point to an instance where they're not. Also it takes ages for stuff to get standardized, are you suggesting that no technology should be applicable until it's the standard? I see no issue in introducing new cool tech specially if it's opensource.

dos1 15y ago
I agree, they do a great job following the standards. I love that. What I don't love is when they break away. That's my whole point - work with the standards body to get your new cool tech introduced. Don't just go rogue and do whatever you want, that's when problems arise.
- yanw 15y ago
  "Breaking away" as you describe it sounds like innovation to me, and pacing innovation to standard bodies would kill it. I can't think of specifics but surly most of what is considered the standard today was once the experimentation of one company or one lab.
  - dos1 15y ago
    Really? When Microsoft "broke away" and created ActiveX, you were in support of that too because it was innovation? Or how bout Adobe and Flash?
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - statictype 15y ago
      ActiveX and Flash were certainly innovations. One of them didn't pan out[1] and the other did and lasted for quite some time. You realize that if not for Flash, sites like Youtube wouldn't have been possible at the time that it was released? [1] ActieX didn't pan out for the web as a whole - it fared well behind the walls of enterprises.
    - AlisdairO 15y ago
      If Microsoft made ActiveX open and easy for other browser manufactures to implement in a cross-platform manner, I would absolutely have been in support of it. They didn't, so I wasn't. Standards bodies move slowly. Non-standardised innovation across browsers is absolutely to be encouraged, as long as it is done in a manner that allows others to implement that innovation too. This sort of innovation is what helps us decide what is worth being made into a standard.
    - DannoHung 15y ago
      Maybe not ActiveX, but when Microsoft created XMLHttpRequest in their javascript engine, that ended up being pretty significant and great for how the web works today.
- jrockway 15y ago
  What problems arise? Why should "standards bodies" affect what features Free Software has? Why allow anyone to release any software at all?
- myko 15y ago
  I would agree with you if their breaking away weren't open sourced.
marshray 15y ago
The problem is when they run off and code something and implement it in Chrome, and then when design problems are found in it during the standardization process they say "well it's deployed in too many units already to fix now", effectively reducing the pool of outside experts in the standards orgs to a bunch of rubber-stamping copy editors.
- dchest 15y ago
  Any examples?
  - marshray 15y ago
    I hesitate to point at examples because I like all the people involved and feel it's not worth making look like more than they are. But I do think there is some basis for the sentiment. So if you are interested, you could study the process by which the HTTP Origin header came to not allow double quotes. There will always be a natural tension between those shipping code and a standardization process.
jrockway 15y ago
I think people complaining about this are upset about the network effect, rather than Chrome adding new features. Say you love Firefox. One day, your favorite website decides to switch entirely to SPDY, and you can't use Firefox anymore. It's natural to blame Google for this, since they invented SPDY and put the client into production. But really, it's that site's developer's fault for using nonstandard features. This happens all the time; Firefox adds non-standard CSS transforms, Microsoft adds non-standard Javascript functionality, and Apple adds proprietary video codecs to Safari. When your web app depends on these things, you hurt your users. But it's your fault for using nonstandard features; it's not Apple's or Google's or Microsoft's fault for making their browser support them. If this upsets you, consider software in general. To use Facebook, you have to use Facebook. That's nonstandard! To use an Emacs extension, you have to use Emacs. That's nonstandard! And so on. Google and Mozilla are especially innocent, since Apple and Microsoft can easily steal any features they want from Chrome and Firefox. They're the only ones out in the open, and for that, I think they deserve to try new things for the web. If they stick, the other vendors can easily support the new features.
- nudded 15y ago
  first you say "One day, your favorite website decides to switch entirely to SPDY, and you can't use Firefox anymore. It's natural to blame Google for this, since they invented SPDY and put the client into production. But really, it's that site's developer's fault for using nonstandard features." then "Google and Mozilla are especially innocent, since Apple and Microsoft can easily steal any features they want from Chrome and Firefox. They're the only ones out in the open, and for that, I think they deserve to try new things for the web. If they stick, the other vendors can easily support the new features." How would these features stick, if developers using them are to blame?
  - jrockway 15y ago
    By degrading gracefully, of course. It's why you can read GMail in IE6, even though the experience is a lot better in Chrome 17.
- ootachi 15y ago

anamax 15y ago

> Sure they're free and open source. But they aren't STANDARDS. So? "Standards" only means that some group has blessed them. In particular, it doesn't imply that you're free to implement them. What can you do with "standards" that you can't do with those projects, as they currently exist? What can't happen with standards that can happen with those projects? Remember, no one is obligated to follow or conform to "standards".

dos1 15y ago
Wow, you're just being contrary to be contrary aren't you? While no one is obligated to follow standards, they certainly help adoption. Without standards we wouldn't be able to just buy a consumer electronics device and plug it in to our standardized plug with standardized voltage would we? Standards are part of our daily lives and without them we would not have progressed nearly as far as we have. Further more, the reason standards are nice here is because a 3rd party is the one who blessed the technology, not the biased producer of the technology. And changes to that standard need to go through the standards body and the producer is not the single owner.
- cornell532 15y ago
  Your point is true, but so is parent post. Standards doesn't mean "no innovation". While the electric outlet may be a "standard" devices that use the electricity shouldn't necessarily be "standard". ie if I want an innovative lamp to plug into my standard electric socket, that is okay. Standards have a place and so do innovations. If Google is releasing all of their innovations which have broad applicability as open source projects, I see no reason they should slow down so that slow-moving, non-innovating standards bodies can catchup.
- anamax 15y ago
  > Wow, you're just being contrary to be contrary aren't you? Not at all. I'm pointing out that they don't have the properties that you're asking for in this case. > Further more, the reason standards are nice here is because a 3rd party is the one who blessed the technology, not the biased producer of the technology. And changes to that standard need to go through the standards body and the producer is not the single owner. Suppose that Google submitted all of those projects to a standards body, got them approved, and then made an incompatible change to their implementations. How does their status as a standard matter?

wycats 15y ago

They are proposed standards. See my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456815 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456815. Standards don't appear out of the ether, fully formed and ready to be implemented. Properly developed standards are built precisely the way Google is building them: with a publicly available proposal and a reference implementation in widely used software.