4 ms·

I think the article summarizes well the issue but completely misses the point on why this is happening. First let me provide some context: I'm Syrus, CEO of Wa

I think the article summarizes well the issue but completely misses the point on why this is happening. First let me provide some context: I'm Syrus, CEO of Wasmer (a WebAssembly-powered company). There has been actors in the industry (I'm not naming them purposefully) that are using their corporate power (that is, their seats of influence over the standards committee) to move things forward as specifications even though their usage is minimal and not strong enough to yet become a standard. The issue about that strategy is that incentivizes creating new "standards" to gain control over them, even though there are already viable solutions for things that will solve people current needs. Let me put some examples of this: 1. Creating Wasi-NN instead of pushing for WebNN standard API [1] 2. Creating WebAssembly Interfaces instead of pushing for WebIDL (specially important for the browser, if we ever want to get DOM access from Wasm, this is probably the fastest way atm) 3. Creating WASI-fs instead of pushing towards the Filesystem spec [1] 4. And so on The issue is not on the technical advances per se, which I personally think they are great. But on the fact that those advancements start creating a breach that is different and competitive with the browser instead of being cohesive and complementary, and by doing that they are putting their governance power interests over the user needs. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/webnn/ https://www.w3.org/TR/webnn/ [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem

ctvo 4y ago
Devil's advocate: Are these companies doing this to control the new standards or are they doing this because adhering to the web standard (both that you linked, I think?) puts them in a position where they'll be captive to an even larger committee (any web standards body), making it so any changes will take longer to push through, and implementation costs will be higher?
- kevingadd 4y ago
  Arguably these are sort of the same thing. Being subject to the whims of the committees is a competitive disadvantage, since the committees are largely controlled by big corporate players. So if you create a new competing standard you control, it's 2-for-1: Not only are you no longer subject to the whims of big companies, but you get to set the rules. One of the upsides to using the big committee standards is that the big companies often have a reference implementation you can use, which is a time-saver. But then you can hit sharp edges or limitations.
- syrusakbary 4y ago
  Sometimes is better to put things into perspective to see if certain arguments hold. In this case, you just need to analyze how fast they have been moving to see if iteration speed was the reason for pushing for own-governance outside of the web-standards (note: WASI, coined by those entities, was launched 4 years ago)

ctvo 4y ago

Devil's advocate: Are these companies doing this to control the new standards or are they doing this because adhering to the web standard (both that you linked, I think?) puts them in a position where they'll be captive to an even larger committee (any web standards body), making it so any changes will take longer to push through, and implementation costs will be higher?

kevingadd 4y ago
Arguably these are sort of the same thing. Being subject to the whims of the committees is a competitive disadvantage, since the committees are largely controlled by big corporate players. So if you create a new competing standard you control, it's 2-for-1: Not only are you no longer subject to the whims of big companies, but you get to set the rules. One of the upsides to using the big committee standards is that the big companies often have a reference implementation you can use, which is a time-saver. But then you can hit sharp edges or limitations.
syrusakbary 4y ago
Sometimes is better to put things into perspective to see if certain arguments hold. In this case, you just need to analyze how fast they have been moving to see if iteration speed was the reason for pushing for own-governance outside of the web-standards (note: WASI, coined by those entities, was launched 4 years ago)