A Blog From Behind the Trenches

Adobe is pushing for Flash to be used in U.S. Open Government initiatives. How proprietary, closed and inaccessible is supposed to be combined with "open", I don't know. I do know that the government should definitely not be promoting closed, proprietary, inaccessible, insecure and harmful technologies.

Back in April, I wrote about how Apple tried to block the W3C Widgets specification with a patent claim.

After spending a lot of W3C members' money to figure out if Apple's claims were valid, the Patent Advisory Group has now come to a conclusion: The work on Widgets 1.0 will continue. Apple's patent claim does not appear to be relevant to the Widgets 1.0 specification:

The Patent Advisory Group concluded that the inventive step claimed by US Patent Nr. 5,764,992 lies in the fact that the software program can update itself absolutely independent of functions performed by any resource external to the current software program. As the Widgets 1.0: Updates Draft uses an update-manager throughout the Specification, such self-updating does not occur.

Read the full report here: Report of the Patent Advisory Group on the Widgets Updates Specification

In an article triggered by RIM's acquisition of Torch Mobile and their WebKit based browser, CNET's Matt Asay argues that Apple has too much control over WebKit. Other companies relying on WebKit for their browser will basically be slaves to Apple's release cycles, and Apple will always control where WebKit is heading and optimize it for their own products.

So what is his solution to this suggested problem?

it would be nice to see a truly open-source project--open in source, and open to outside involvement--standardize the mobile browsing experience, too

In other words, he is echoing Symbian's call for a standardized browser for all mobile phones.

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There's some potentially bad news from the open standards front.

Early last month, it became clear that Apple might be causing trouble for the W3C Widgets specification. They are unwilling to make patent 5,764,992 (W3C information), which covers automatic software upates, royalty-free if the Widgets Update specification is found to use anything covered by the patent. This basically means a lot of additional work for the Working Group at the W3C, and might slow down the process of finalizing the widgets specification.

So as a response to this situation the W3C has put together a Patent Advisory Group, meaning that several companies are forced to spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out if Apple's patent claim actually applies, and if it does, what to do about it.

With the recent rumours of Apple getting all lawsuit-happy over patents, what are they up to exactly?

For Opera's position on software patents, take a look at Opera's vision statement.

According to Microsoft, "E8 RC1 has the most complete implementation of the CSS 2.1 specification in the industry".

We have heard big promises from Microsoft in the past that they have not delivered upon, but recently they have found incentives to play nice and actually follow through on their promises.

If this really signals action rather than mere words, congratulations to Microsoft!

However, while these words from Microsofts are promising, there may be some problems as well. Daniel Glazman comments that some work still remains before Microsoft can claim the CSS 2.1 crown:

Full CSS 2.1 complete support is cool but it must be said that "full CSS 2.1 support" does not mean anything yet. CSS 2.1 is not yet a W3C Recommendation and it does not have an approved full Test Suite yet. Microsoft has submitted a rough 7,000 CSS 2.1 tests to the CSS WG but these tests need review before becoming official.

In the comments, James Hopkins points out some problems as well:

I'd argue that many of those 7,000 test cases are surfeit and unneccessary. For example, they have around 50 test cases specifically testing an absolutely positioned element that is offset to the left, and some are actually invalid.

If Microsoft's claims are based on invalid tests, one can hope that this is merely an error on their part. Normally one would not attribute to malice what could equally well be attributed to mistakes, but knowing Microsoft's history, we should keep scrutinizing their every move, and every claim. "Errors" have historically turned out to be conscious decisions on Microsoft's part to undermine open standards and competition in the market.

How did Norway come to vote yes to Microsoft's OOXML format? Not only did the vast majority attending the meeting vote against the proposed standard, but the people who let it through admitted that it was a broken standard which would need fixing later.

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It looks like Microsoft has changed its mind regarding standards in IE8:

We've decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we've posted previously.

This clearly shows how important it is to keep up the pressure on Microsoft to finally deliver on its promises.

Some may be wondering if this changes anything about Opera's antitrust complaint, but the bottom line is that the massive focus on open standards lately might be bearing fruit. If Microsoft does deliver a browser which is standards compliant by default, this is great news indeed! And at least now, we will have the EU keeping an eye on Microsoft, and giving it real incentive to follow up its promises for once.

In his blog, Jeffrey Zeldman defends version targeting. As most people probably know by now, there is a proposal out there which involves IE8 basically requiring that you opt-in to its standards compliance. Needless to say, most people think this is a really, really bad idea. Apart from Zeldman's attempt at dismissing criticism as "ingrained dislike of Microsoft", something else really caught my eye.

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If you take the Acid2 test in any browser, you will notice that they all fail. This is not because all browsers suddenly stopped passing Acid2, but because of an error with the test itself.

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Important note: In this blog, I speak on behalf of myself and myself alone. I am not involved in W3C activities at Opera, as my work is mainly outside the area of standards. For official statements from Opera Software ASA, please get in touch with our PR contacts or read our press releases. With that out of the way...

I have previously written about how there are signs that Microsoft may be trying to sabotage the EcmaScript 4 standard by using various dishonest tactics, such as misinformation and stalling. Imagine my surprise when, even at a time when it is under investigation for anti-competitive practices, Microsoft may be actively working to slow down the progress of other standards as well.

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