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I detect a large helping of standards-itis in this article, perhaps generated from the author's position in the W3C. I contend that, while standards testing is a *very* good thing, and that standards compliance labels should very much be awarded by the standards body to recognize levels of compliance, the W3C has made a very arrogant mistake in its approach to standards and enforcement.
Standards are a good thing. I do not deny this fact. However, a standard is not something that arises a priori. A specification arises a priori, but not a standard. A standard is a way of doing something that has been adopted by the community as a whole (preferably based on its merits, though occasionally not). In the W3C, I see the generation of forward-looking specifications that have been given the label "standard" without any community consensus. And no, the community of self-appointed experts who are on each working group does not constitute the entire community of developers and users.
Please understand, I am not attacking the work of the W3C, as I think that much of it has a great deal of value. I am, however, attacking the contention that what the W3C produces should rightly be called standards, and the fundamentally arrogant attitude held by the W3C regarding enforcement, as exemplified by the article.
While the W3C has been very busy generating what I think of as specifications, specifications that very frequently have immense technical value if adopted as industry standards, it seems to me that it constantly falls prey to putting the cart before the horse. Uptake of XML, for instance, is due to the inherent value that people saw in having a common means of defining the syntax and semantics of text markup. The need for a solution arose, W3C came up with a specification for a solution, people saw it and liked it, and now XML is widespread. The W3C maintains the definition of the specification, and individual groups either adhere to this definition or not. And thus, those who do so adhere have a means of interoperability and common tools that would otherwise mean custom development or be completely denied them.
But that's the fundamental point -- what the W3C produced is a *specification* rather than a standard. It *became* a standard through widespread adoption, due to its innate usefulness. The takeaway point here is that standards cannot be enforced, because if nobody uses a specification, it is NOT a standard. Look at HTML for this -- W3C has produced several specifications for HTML, and while individual documents can be validated as complying with the specification, no user agent of which I am aware meets all the applicable specifications. Some come close, while others disregard the specifications and implement recognition of tags that don't exist in the specs. And *all* of them (except, I suppose, Amaya) implement a variation of "quirks" mode.
So, when folks from the W3C argue that standards should be enforced for the good of humanity, or at least the good of computing, my hackles instinctively raise. How can the W3C arrogate to itself the one true vision of how something is supposed to work? All it *should* do is promote awareness of its specifications and reward with some official notice those who do comply. And the same is true for all guardians of standards.
Again, I am not attacking the W3C's technical competence on the whole, nor am I attacking the value of adhering to public standards. I simply dislike the overbearing posture exhibited by articles such as this. It isn't a standard if nobody adheres to it. Adherence should be voluntary and due to the advantages of using the standardized specification.
Okay, maybe I'm just grumpy and this gets my back up a bit...
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