Where Web Standards Come From
(and how to help shape them)

 

How people think standards work...

The most brilliant minds, solving the problem

Nope.

Hi.

I work on web standards, and implementations...

 

"Who is involved in standards?"
"How are standards are made?"

"Where are standards made?"


I'll do one better...

Why is Standards?

A brief meta diversion...
Because it is important.

 You leave Philadelphia at 10:25 am.
You travel for two hours.
You arrive in Pittsburgh at 11:15 am.
How?

A fun word problem..

Time travel?

Way simpler answer...

Local time: Literally sun time

The Library of Congress was required to keep track of well over 300 different local times and travelers would need to be mindful of each one during travel.

Number of Standards Bodies on the Planet

0

Before Industrialization...

  • Steam Power

  • Semaphore Communications

  • Rotary engines

  • Telegraph

  • Railroad

  • Telephone

Dramatically new problems and scales

Lack of standardization is a literal

train-wreck.

In 1862 there was a 24 minute difference.

https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/western-pennsylvania-history/samuel-langley-pioneering-standard-time

Fun fact: Pittsburgh history!

We didn't even have common words to describe things like "gauge of the track"

Interop on a grand scale can get important relatively fast.

1903: 1500 buildings burned in Great Baltimore Fire
The fire fighting equipment uses over 600 variants of hose size/couplings.

Competition run amok

Ok... Maybe some cooperation is good?

FFWD...

Ok... but how?

  • National Standards Bodies
  • International Standards Bodies
  • Recognized Standards Bodies
  • Kinda recognized not exactly standards bodies
  • Consortia
  • Experts Groups
  • Foundations

Today, we have many different things...

They are all the same in some ways, and very different in others

So many variables

  • Participation
  • Working modes
  • Certification Programs?
  • Legal Requirements
  • Degrees of openness
  • Funding?
  • ...and more.

The high order bit:
There is no single "how it works"

...And they change.

But why?

The answer is pretty simple.

So... Warning:
Details can change.

(I'll note a few historical examples)

Focus on some specifics...

Where...

Open Standards

Very long life.

 

The internet: 50

The web: 30

About 90% of Fortune 500 companies 

50 years ago are gone or radically changed.

Not going to talk about this one...

Lots of stuff... Notably protocols like HTTP and TCP/IP..


'HTML 2.0'

Not going to talk about this one...

Where JavaScript the language and related efforts are standardized.

Where CSS, accessibility, internationalization, XR, many browser APIs and more are standardized

Where HTML and DOM are standardized.

We'll focus on these, and what they do today...

HTML 3.2, 4.01, CSS, accessibility, internationalization, XR, many browser APIs and more are standardized

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

Aim:
Bring together

diverse interests to 

work on a common

problem
 

  • Consortia - orgs pay for membership.
  • Membership means you have an "AC Rep" who is in charge of your org's participation: 1 member, 1 vote.
  • Working Groups
    • 'chartered'
    • work on specifications
    • mailing lists / github
    • 'regular teleconfs'
    • face-to-face meetings
    • voluntary and no-guarantees
    • "two interoperable implementations"

Charter, Drafts, process, recs

Anyone can participate...

...kinda

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

Invited expert

Perfect, right?

What is real?

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

Aim:
Bring together

important interests to 

work on a common

problem, try to bring
some of the good bits
along, but not avoid
the bad bits

The Decider

WHATWG 

All work is open, management is minimal/cheap mostly

Fail

ECMA

... can I help?

Should I?

Maybe?

Why, is a good question...

A note on the economics of standards participation...

by and large, standards are slow.

I just want to contribute to the betterment of the commons...

 

 

 

File bugs!

 

 

 

Contribute tests

Review Proposals, open issues/comment

See also: The economics of standards participation

TC39: Stages

https://github.com/tc39/ecma402/wiki/Proposal-and-PR-Progress-Tracking

More practical use polyfills, open issues

https://github.com/babel/babel

Write polyfills?

 

Polyfills?

I have ideas...

https://webwewant.fyi

https://discourse.wicg.io/

https://wicg.io/

https://es.discourse.group/

Implement something?  

Fund the implementation of something?

Houdini Task Force

Anyone can be involved...

Kinda.

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

Priority Management is one of the biggest problems

 

There is a natural tendency to exclude, not for intentionally evil reasons but because people need to advance according to their priorities in a voluntary process. 

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