In a sign of growing discord over Web services guidelines, Microsoft has pulled out of a key Web services standards working group.
Microsoft Breaks with Standards Effort
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Microsoft doesn’t like open standards … shocking revolation.
Web services being about lots of different systems from different vendors, rather than locking clients into your own products to the exclusion of others. So it’s not really suprising that Microsoft has decided that it is going it’s own propriertory way, to actually forllow through on the websservices hype might damage there lock in in other areas as well as allowing other servers to compete on there merits as servers rather than there merits on interaging with MS monopoly products.
I wonder which of these two will try to patent the W3C’s work first?
The Microsoft way: 1) get involved 2) gain marketshare 3) break standard 4) create MS protocol. 5) Back to 1.
Shouldn’t the article mention the W3C? The average news.com reader might now know the W3C, but on OSN the reader should. After reading only the OSN article I assumed that MS pulled out of WS-I or OASIS, but not W3C (which is not focussed on web services).
the article does state that they pulled out of the W3C group as well.
Now Microsoft has upped the rancor by dropping out of a W3C working group focused on establishing rules for how businesses will send and receive data to one another via Web services.
from the first paragraph of Eugenia’s link. The odd thing is:
However, only a few days after the initial meeting, Microsoft notified the committee’s co-chairman that the company planned to withdraw.
leaving so soon shows there was not really much point in there turning up anyway. Also such a rapid departure can surly only be taken to mean that they didn’t really think that this standard was worth anything, and they could make a better one on their own. If it had just been a direction problem then staying and aurguing, for a while at least, would have been much more effective as they might have been able to get there way. This way there is no chance of influance
That’s the MS way. Screw everyone else, we’ll *make* the standard.
Unfortunately, they have a *massive* enough customer base to pull it off, regardless of whether what they come up with sucks or not.
Standart = lot of talking = lot of problem solved before shipping = more stable product = less chance to sell a new version.
Now, where did i put that punch_Bill_Gates_in the_nose.swf thing
I’m sorry, but W3C is a joke. Netscape knew it when they were the dominant browser company, and Microsoft knows it now.
W3C is a committee. And like all committees, they halt progress because it takes them forever to agree on anything. If we had waited for W3C to make something a standard, we probably wouldn’t even have tables yet. It’s the browser companies that drive the advcancement of Web technology. W3C hinders it.
They are fed up with not having everything go their way. What do spoiled children do when things don’t go their way? They run away and pout!! We’re just going to see a new series of Webservice Standards done the M$ way… and their current customers that have invested large sums in Webservices will be pulled along kicking and screaming…
M$ will never be OPEN… it’s a concept that just doesn’t compute with them…
W3C is a committee. And like all committees, they halt progress because it takes them forever to agree on anything. If we had waited for W3C to make something a standard, we probably wouldn’t even have tables yet. It’s the browser companies that drive the advcancement of Web technology. W3C hinders it.
The web is a communication medium, it becomes more useful the more people can access it and use it correctly. This requires a standard and therefore a body to make sure that the standard remains, well, standard. Rather than having extra propirty bits grafted on, stopping the exclusion of groups of people from communicating and therefore maintaining the level usefulness of the overall system.
Compare GSM with the various US 2G mobile technologies. GSM was a standard created by commitee, it works the same everywhere and everywhere it’s used has reduced mobile phones to a comodity item, even more so than computers. The US let the market decide, and therefore ended up with several incompatible, therefore less useful, networks, and so considerably lower mobile phone ownership.
Also please not CSS. Created by W3C to forfill a major problem that the browser specific layout tags where creating, and does it very well. Has the major browser company created a desent implementation yet?
“Microsoft Breaks with Standards Effort” – GASP, SHOCK HORROR!!!
i was so hoping for an IE7 that was standards compliant for a wide range of technologies. png in particular. this sucks. not surprising though. it probably is the only way they can stem the growth of alternate browsers.
MS is crap.
i agree with chris completely.
Just think about what it has done and how it do business!
Even the real evil will be shame of it!
BTW, do all people think windows XP’s red and blue color blocks are REALLY beautiful?
plain and simple. they want to lock themselves into MS’s overpriced, underwhelming products. just dumb
It’s Microsoft and IBM on one side vs. SUN on the other side.
Ok, the article does try to give the impression that Microsoft pulled out of a very very important organization or group (so called W3C), but that’s not the case. Anybody who is not biased and not an idiot should be able to understand that case easily.
What they pulled out is a small group, and this is perfectly ok. Even IBM is not on that group. Bashing Microsoft based on this news is such plain stupid. Especially when it is from News.com
I will not say that no good can ever come of Microsoft.
I will say that that whatever good does come from Microsoft
it is an unintended accident that occurs inspite of themselves.
I think that everyone should take a brief pause before reacting to this. The specification of an orchestration standard for WebServices (a horrible name that doesn’t do the technology justice) is critical to the long term development of distributed ‘transactional’ computing technology.
There is a fundamental disagreement in approach between the approach of the W3C working groups, and the MS/IBM approach. If you read the various proposed specifications, you will see that the W3C specs. are heavy-weight, multiply-redundant and do not mesh well together. The over-engineering of SOAP, the pending irrelevance of WSDL are cases in point. MS/IBM have taken a ‘leaner, cleaner’ approach, even if it means reworking or abandoning earlier specs.
Personally, I’m inclined more towards the MS/IBM proposals (although I’m generally quite pro-MS, so take what I say with a pinch of salt), but it is really important to study the detailed implications of the competing specifications before you take a view on the reasoning behind them.
Just because MS may come out with more proprietary ‘standards’ of their own in the future doesn’t mean that people have to use them. Hell, if I were a webmaster, I’d make my website so that it works even in 3.x browsers. Most of the crap that pollutes websites these days (Flash, DHTML, etc) is rarely ever needed. Good technologies, but horribly misused.
“Just because MS may come out with more proprietary ‘standards’ of their own in the future doesn’t mean that people have to use them. ”
Compare what you said, verses reality, and you’ll find that you’re in the minority. It’s *slowly* turning around, but there’s a lot more work ahead, before everyone can breath easy.
“The web is a communication medium, it becomes more useful the more people can access it and use it correctly.”
My customers could care less whether their Web page can pass the weblint test or not. They could also care less whether it is compliant with W3C standards or not. All they care about is that their Web page does a better job of selling their product than the web page of their competition. As long as it can be read by IE and Netscape, they are happy.
“This requires a standard and therefore a body to make sure that the standard remains, well, standard.”
Netscape didn’t care. Microsoft doesn’t either. Do you know how many tags we use that are supported by both IE and Netscape, but W3C still hasn’t implemented as a standard? How long were tables in use, and supported by IE and Netscape before W3C made them standard? A hell of a long time.
“Also please not CSS. Created by W3C to forfill a major problem that the browser specific layout tags where creating, and does it very well. Has the major browser company created a desent implementation yet?”
It does it very well? LOL When was the last time you actually used CSS? Well guess what? To this day, not a single browser implements all of CSS correctly. Want an example? use CSS to set a top margin. Apparently Microsoft and Netscape can’t agree on what 20% of the browsing window is, since the margin will be different in IE and Netscape. Because of the fact that no browser implements CSS correctly, we are still stuck setting colors and such in both the stylesheet and the HTML page itself. That way our pages “fail gracefully” when they fail because no browser implements the entire CSS standard correctly. Yeah. W3C was real effective here. They implemented a standard that to this day, no browser manufactuer has implemented correctly.
“Also please not CSS. Created by W3C to forfill a major problem that the browser specific layout tags where creating, and does it very well. Has the major browser company created a desent implementation yet?”
By the way… CSS was not created to fix this problem. It was created so that Web pages could be given a common design that could be set once, and then all the pages in your presentation could just call the stylesheet. Also, if you wanted to change the basic design, all you had to do was change the stylesheet once. But even here, CSS so far has not succeeded because one still needs to set the styles in the HTML file as well, otherwise things are likely to not work on all browsers because no browser implements all of CSS correctly.
And remember that stylesheets have existed since the World Wide Web first started. It’s just that they were hard coded into the browser and couldn’t be changed by the designer. All CSS does (and doesn’t do very well at this point), is allow the designer to override the hard coded stylesheet.
Purhaps I should have said Internet instead of web. Even though many of these web services will be running over port 80, such as SOAP. I was using CSS as a second example to GSM. If you read the article then you will realise this is nothing to do with web pages. This is about Web Services. That is XML based comunications over the internet, for example two companies may want one’s Oracle database to talk to the others BEA Systems application server and exchange data as part of the business transaction that they are conducting.
This spec is about the setting up of that interchange. No human is every really likely to look at the output of these things other than the initial programmer. This is about interoperability of many different systems, hence the need for standards. Preferably standards that all the vendors can use without prohibative licencing terms, as this will increase the number of nodes capable of being involved in the network and so it’s utility. Something that the W3C currently guarentees.
Matthew Adams has some more interesting points, but the spec of this standard hasn’t been released yet, or even the draft spec so it’s a bit to early to tell if it will be over engineered like SOAP. I hope not. But still as I said in my first post had MS stayed in the group and been committed to producing a true standard then they would have been able to argue for a cleaner spec, something that would have benefitted everyone. If the spec turns out to crufty then we will be using the MS standard anyway because it’s better to program, despit the possible licencing hassles.
>>My customers could care less whether their Web page can pass the weblint test or not. They could also care less whether it is compliant with W3C standards or not. All they care about is that their Web page does a better job of selling their product than the web page of their competition. As long as it can be read by IE and Netscape, they are happy. <<
Its no concern of a customer if its standards compliant its the concern of the developer. duh! of course the customers are not going to care. if they knew about it they would not hire you to make the site in the first place becuase they would have the knowledge to do it themselves.
>>Netscape didn’t care. Microsoft doesn’t either. Do you know how many tags we use that are supported by both IE and Netscape, but W3C still hasn’t implemented as a standard? How long were tables in use, and supported by IE and Netscape before W3C made them standard? A hell of a long time.<<
nothing wrong with adding on top of the standard just support all of the standard first then suggest your ideas for the next version of the standard. standards take time becuase you (standards body) are trying to get it right the first time. which is not something most software companies do.
>>t does it very well? LOL When was the last time you actually used CSS? Well guess what? To this day, not a single browser implements all of CSS correctly. Want an example? use CSS to set a top margin. Apparently Microsoft and Netscape can’t agree on what 20% of the browsing window is, since the margin will be different in IE and Netscape. Because of the fact that no browser implements CSS correctly, we are still stuck setting colors and such in both the stylesheet and the HTML page itself. That way our pages “fail gracefully” when they fail because no browser implements the entire CSS standard correctly. Yeah. W3C was real effective here. They implemented a standard that to this day, no browser manufactuer has implemented correctly.<<
not exactly true. most have not implemented it completely but that doesnt mean what is implemented is all wrong. putting a top margin of 20% SHOULD give a margin of 20% of the viewport not of the entire page. but some browsers implemented it and never fixed it, namely IE. about the text color. what do you use none css browsers or something??? i mean i dont have a browser on my computer that cant at LEAST do css text color!!! failing gracefully means the visitor can read the text if the style does not work, not that it remains styled.
you are wrong about the post after this one i replied to as well
. the thing is you worry too much about very old browsers. http://superinetmall.com/webd/ uses css-p and styling nicely 
. (have only tested in IE 6, Moz, Opera)
happy coding!
another thought.
are you using doctype declarations in your code? that will affect the display of your css in IE somewhat (in a good way).
“Its no concern of a customer if its standards compliant its the concern of the developer. duh! of course the customers are not going to care. if they knew about it they would not hire you to make the site in the first place becuase they would have the knowledge to do it themselves.”
I think you missed the point. The point is that if I gave my customers two options:
1. I can make you a Web page that is completely W3C standards compliant and guranteed to work on any browser, but it won’t be able to take advantage of the latest bells and whistles, so that means your site won’t be as fun as your competition’s site.
2. I can make you a Web page that uses the latest and greatest technology. It will not be fully W3C compliant, and I can’t gurantee it will display on all browsers. But it will display on correctly on Internet Explorer and Netscape, which combined have the vast majority of the browser market. It will be more fun for visitors than your competition’s site because it has more cool latest technology.
My cusomter is going to choose option 2 because they are going to get a bigger net benefit from people finding their site to be better than their competition’s site, then they would get from ensuring that their site could be viewed on every single browser.
These days, for example, unless you are specifically targetting a UNIX market, it makes little sense to ensure that your site is “Lynx friendly”, since Lynx has such a small marketshare that in most companie’s server logs, it probably won’t show up at all.
“putting a top margin of 20% SHOULD give a margin of 20% of the viewport not of the entire page. but some browsers implemented it and never fixed it, namely IE.”
“about the text color. what do you use none css browsers or something???”
Opera may have fixed it by now, but a year ago, Opera did not render certain background colors correctly. Example, set the background color to #cccc99, and then place a PNG image on the page that has a background color of #cccc99. You will be able to see the square background of the image because Opera is slightly off on the background color. (Why not use a transparent background on the image? Because this was before most browsers supported PNG transparency.) The square background of the PNG was invisible in IE and Netscape.
This is not entirely fair because Opera also rendered the background color incorrectly when it was set directly in the HTML page. But still, it shows that we can’t rely on W3C’s standards anyway since browser manufactuers often don’t implement them correctly.
what latest bells and whistles?
IE does not support transparent png and that is pretty important. that is not the standards body fault that a browser does not support a given feature. i do agree that some feature support is spotty.
i wouldnt worry too much about lynx anyway. Opera had problems in version <7 with backgrounds and such you are correct. but that would not stop me from using the standards. i would let it break so it gets fixed.
but i would like to know what bells and whistles prevent you from using the standard.
If you want bells and whistles most of that stuff can be better done in Flash (98% browser penetration, open spec, available on all platforms, lower bandwidth hit if you know what your doing), rather than DHTML anyway. This is not to say that if you want to use DHTML you shouldn’t go wit hthe W3C standards to ttry and be compatible with the greatest potential audience anyway.
I stand by my statement that CSS was to get around the browser specific layout tags. I was designed to abstract presentation from structure, as had been the case in the original HTML spec before Netscape et al. got there hands on it. Being able to apply one style sheet to multiple pages was an added bonus. You may want too read about the wired.com redesign on this topic http://www.wired.com/news/explanation.html
However the article was not about web pages but web services. These machine read pages require adherence to standards to a much greater degree than mere pages as the reads don’t have the intellect to read around even small inconsistencies, and don’t care about presentation anyway. The important thing about this is that MS is going to try and create there own de facto “standard”. So that all the companies that don’t use MS products (SQL Server, internal VB apps, Office) could end up being locked out if they don’t buy compatible servers from MS if they want to do business with the ones that do. Even if say a Linux or FreeBSD server suits there needs better.
Having seen this whole discussion decend into talk about web-browser related standards. The sooner WebServices get called something else, the better.
The set of standards…SOAP (and its various encodings), WSDL, WS-Addressing, WS-Routing, SW-Security etc. are not about ‘pages’, but about protocols for inter-application communications. One current transport for this is a textual encoding over HTTP, but its better to forget that HTTP is anything to do with it, really (and there are good arguments to say that it won’t/shouldn’t be).
Is is also important to note that the key to this is *interoperation*. That’s why IBM and MS – who are in intense competition in terms of the platform that can deliver these services – are working so hard to define workable standards that can be demonstrated to interoperate.
MS *and* IBM are pulling out of the W3CWG (or, rather, proposing an alternate standard that will probably be picked up by the W3C at some later date). This is nothing to do with vendor lock-in.
Yes the name is confusing, I bet they just used the word web to make these interesting interoperability protocols seem cooler to the lay person. Rather like the mess MS made of .NET by trying to brand everything with it, even if they have nothing to do with the .NET platform of C# and the CLR. But anyway back to MS bashing ;-).
MS has made there monopoly in productivity software with great assistence from lock-in with complex propratory file formats and protocols to avoid other products being able to interoperate well. There is very little evidence, none that I have seen but if anyone has some links I’ll read them, that they have changed there tune on this. Please not the C# class library. While most of it was submitted to ECMA, the important bits wheren’t and remain proprierty. That is Windows.Forms and ADO.NET, these being the components for GUIs and database conectivity. This very cleverly fillets the usefulness of the ECMA submission of the two most used things for business.
Is there any reason that MS won’t include patented stuff in their protocol that will stop the release of compatible Free Software? Or even just optimisng it to the way MS SQL Server (and DB2) work? MS would love this as it would give them a chance of stopping the advance of Linux as a server OS, while helping there own servers. IBM big iron has no threat from MS servers so they can quite happily go along with MS so long as they are in on the deal and can therefore get to use MS’s desktop monopoly (think VB apps here) to lever there servers against Sun and BAE Systems who are a threat to them (and involved on the W3C standard).
MS and IBM have past form on this kind of thing.
“However the article was not about web pages but web services.”
Yes, and I would argue that W3C is way out of their league here anyway. They no busienss sticking their nose into this area. This is the domain of ANSI or ISO. NOT W3C.
The W3C would seem to be the natural place actually, seeing as they control the XML standard that all web services are based on. As well as many of the other web services standards that have already been specified