On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:29:17 +0200, Peter Kasting <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 2:41 AM, Anne van Kesteren <[email protected]>
wrote:
The "vendor consensus" line of argument seems like a very dangerous
slippery slope. It would mean that whenever a vendor refuses to
implement something it has to be taken out of the specification. I.e.
giving a single vendor veto power over the documentation of the Web
Platform. Not good at all in my opinion.
I am merely echoing Hixie; from his original email in this thread:
At the end of the day, the browser vendors have a very effective
absolute veto on anything in the browser specs,
You mean they have the power to derail a spec?
They have the power to not implement the spec, turning the spec from a
useful description of implementations into a work of fiction.
That's something I would have considered before the advent of Mozilla
Firefox.
Mozilla also has the power of veto here. For example, if we required that
the browsers implement H.264, and Mozilla did not, then the spec would be
just as equally fictional as it would be if today we required Theora.
I disagree with the characterization Ian makes here as I believe being
royalty free is very important for the formats we actively deploy to the
Web and as such H.264 is not an option.
My sole goal was to try and point out that the situation with codecs is
not equivalent to past cases where vendors merely _hadn't implemented_
part of the spec; in this case vendors have _actively refused_ to
implement support for various codecs (Apple with Theora and
Mozilla(/Opera?) with H.264).
Somehow I doubt that if e.g. Opera vetoed the <video> element it would
actually be removed from the specification. And if it that were the case I
would consider it to be very bad as I mentioned in my initial email in
this thread.
--
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/
