RE: W3C Invitation

["Micone, Andrew (Manpower Contract)" <andrew.micone@xxxxxx>]

Michael wrote:
"Finding anyone insane enough to chair this hornets nest who has the 
skills necessary to do a good job and the time/energy needed to make 
this a success will be difficult at best."

That underscores the issue of whether W3C member organizations are
willing to commit time and resources to making it work. There are people
with standards body experience out there with the soft skills to do that
who also love the work. Yes, by the way, we are all insane.

"The successes of W3C during the browser wars were possible because 
the *individuals* got along just fine...I think even the most casual
observer of the RSS/Atom world would be inclined to doubt that these
conditions are duplicated "

I couldn't agree with you more. The Atom vs. RSS debate is really about
"disruptive innovation done in the light of day" vs. "don't tip over my
apple cart." That's hardly a common basis to have a dialogue over a
technical standard.

"W3C mainly  is a consortium of big vendors, and the processes are
geared to that reality..."

Which again comes down to the crux of the issue as to whether with a
lighweight process can be hammered out, otherwise the member
organizations are going to need to pony up some heavyweight resources
for a heavyweight process. Atom isn't a standard big companies can yet
grasp or appreciate and that's going to mean resource starvation for a
W3C push. The problem with disruptive innovation is that by definition
it doesn't appeal to big companies until it starts to eat their lunch.