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I think the problem is that people irrationally hate google the way slashdot irrationally hated micro$oft back in the day.

There is really no winning for them. They weren't even the party who proposed removing xslt.

simonw 294 days ago

Are you talking about Google as a whole?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988418

> they operate in a self-serving echo chamber.

Like HN isn't on these type of topics. Just an hour ago you said that they're trying to kill XSLT because it "not a tool for surveillance capitalism"[1]. A claim made completely unencumbered by any evidence, of course. It's little more than a nonsensical conspiracy theory.

There's a reason all the major browsers are kind of on-board with this, just like there's a reason it never got updated much beyond XSLT 1. If XSLT would be proposed today, adding it to browsers would be a complete non-starter. Newer browsers like Servo or Ladybird have not even mentioned XSLT as near as I can find. It's very low low on their priority list, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least some people working on those browsers would prefer to not implement it at all.

The funny thing about people stuck in echo chambers is that they cannot comprehend how anyone could disagree with them, so then they reach to conspiracy theories to "explain" this, completely ignoring all the technical arguments.

_Algernon_ 294 days ago

>There's a reason all the major browsers are kind of on-board with this, just like there's a reason it never got updated much beyond XSLT 1. If XSLT would be proposed today, adding it to browsers would be a complete non-starter.

If HTML didn't exist and was proposed today (please forgive the forced hypothetical) it would be a non-starter. Every tech-startup would instead want you to use their dedicated app. We rarely create shared standards or protocols anymore. We should at least keep the ones we have.

XSLT is not going away. You can still use it no matter what happens (and it's far from certain something will happen). Browsers are still built on open standards. It just doesn't need to be bundled in every browser by default, similar to BMP as mentioned in the article.

What do you think happened when HTML was introduced? Its not like html was the only thing trying to do hypertext documents. HTML just happened to win.

_bzuf 294 days ago

I didn't say that's why they were doing it.

Mate ... Your full comment:

"XSLT isn't a tool for surveillance capitalism, nor for glossy product brochure presentation, nor for captive passive doomscrolling video experiences, so it must be actively excised from the global knowledge network hypermedia standard"

If that's not saying "they're doing it because [..]" then I don't know what it's saying.

_bzuf 294 days ago

I made my point more clear in this later comment thread, in which we are talking, where I said:

> I think a key problem here has nothing to do with the merits of XSLT, but is that some parties involved have no credibility when it comes to their intentions.

There is a long history of conflicts of interest in Web standards (de jure and de facto), and my point is that regardless of the merits of removing XSLT there's a big problem of the lack of credibility of some.

It's that history and credibility that is inviting impassioned pushback.

The dialogue makes a lot more sense once we realize the credibility problem.

If we ignore that credibility problem, we'll be banging our heads against the wall with how crazy the dialogue is.

Once we acknowledge the problem, we might be able to move forward, and perhaps even improve the root problem.

Okay, so you're saying these people have no credibility to their intentions, and you posit some nefarious alternative motivations for removing XSLT. But you're not saying these people (with no credibility to their intentions) are actually doing this for the alternative nefarious reasons that you mentioned. Ehh... like ... what?

You said what you said in that thread. And your "clarification" here adds little nuance to it.

dfabulich 294 days ago

I think there are two reasonable incompatible points of view at work here:

1. "Play Nice": Browser vendors are trying to do what’s right for the web with budgets that are substantially outside their control. But browser vendors have the right to control their budgets, and to make decisions about what features to support or not to support. Web developers have to persuade browser vendors in order to get what they want; they have no special moral rights here. It is both practical and ethical to treat browser vendors politely, and not to rudely shame them.

(Eric Meyer's blog post here is firmly in the "Play Nice" point of view. "Google has trillions of dollars," he writes. "The Chrome team very much does not.")

2. "Fight the Power": Browser vendors are in a position of power, and that creates a moral responsibility to web developers. Their budgets are substantially within their control, and if their moral duty requires them to spend more on browser development, then that’s what duty requires. Frequently, browser vendors will try to shirk their duty to web developers in order to manage their budgets; this is always wrong, every time they do it.

There are two sub-bullets under "Fight the Power."

2a. When browser vendors shirk their responsibility, we all have a duty to shame the ones doing it in a noisy protest, not because that’s a practical way to persuade browser vendors, but because protesting/shaming wrongdoers in positions of power is ethical for its own sake.

2b. Browser vendors will try to shield themselves from protests by putting “code of conduct” rules in place against protesting/shaming them, especially against personal attacks. But it’s unethical for browser vendors (actors in a position of power) to enforce a code of conduct that prevents powerless web devs from shaming them, so the code of conduct should be protested, too; browser vendors should furthermore be shamed for having a code of conduct that interferes with the right/duty of web devs to protest shameful behavior. At a minimum, web devs should non-violently resist the code of conduct by actively violating it, and by shaming browser vendors for trying to enforce it.

I think the majority point of view here on HN is "Fight the Power." Google's up to no good, again, huh? Then we've all gotta shame them into doing the right thing again with a righteous flame war, no holds barred, including direct personal attacks. ("Should Mason Freed be removed from web standards?")

And if they try to delete/suppress our flamey personal-attack posts calling out their shameful behavior, why, that's even more shameful, and we've gotta call that out, too.

I think both points of view are reasonable. The problem is when people don't even realize that the other point of view exists.

ocdtrekkie 294 days ago

This. If the WHATWG does not want to be brigaded while they destroy the web, they need to provide a clear venue for people to indicate whether or not the community is accepting of a change. The web is ours, not theirs. And I think we should rightfully set fire to the WHATWG's implementation discussions until they recognize that fact.

One of the things I learned about Google during the AMP4Email fiasco is that the standards-development folks there... do not know the word no. There is no process to tell them that something should not be done. If you do, you broke the code of conduct, because they're Googlers and they Know Better. People like Mason Freed in the XSLT thread are sad that people trying to tell him no are getting in the way of him talking to people who will tell him yes.

At the point where the courts have determined that Google abuses it's monopoly control of the web, honestly, there's a question why Google is involved in standards-setting as opposed to being relegated to an advisory position required to implement standards as-designed by everyone else.

> they need to provide a clear venue for people to indicate whether or not the community is accepting of a change.

The venue is the right to fork.

The standard is made by people who write code implementing web browsers. Rando freeloaders who don't put in the work don't get a vote.

This is how the internet has always worked, to pataphrase a different standards body - running code and loose consensus.

spankalee 294 days ago

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what standards are here.

The web is what the engines implement and what sites use. Always has been. A standard that's not implemented isn't worth anything.

Web standards exist to help browsers be interoperable. Before them one browser would implement something, and if another liked it they would too. That can still happen, but standards mediate the process to be less chaotic and more reliable.

Web standards cannot force browsers to do anything. If a browser doesn't implement a standard - and there are lot of unimplemented "standards" out there - then it just doesn't.

As a user then you have the choice to use browsers that offer better or different standards support. If you require XSLT support, and Firefox removes it, you can use Safari, or Chrome. If Chrome removes it, you can hopefully use an Blink engine that keeps the feature on (usually they're removed with a flag far before they're actually deleted with code).

And this is the real problem with a lack of browser diversity: Users need to be able to vote with their feet.

But... if all the vendors agree on something, as a user good luck with finding an alternative. I seriously doubt Opera, Brave, or Vivaldi is going to do the work and take the security risk to add back XSLT. Servo and Ladybird aren't going to come to the rescue here either. They most likely would love to have less to implement.

ocdtrekkie 294 days ago

> A standard that's not implemented isn't worth anything

I agree, but this is not about that.

XSLT is implemented. Websites use it. I would argue the barrier to remove it should be incredibly high, not "we don't want to financially support the dude who maintains the library". Web standards should be close to permanent, which is why we should not add stupid ones left and right.

The problem I have in particular with how Google uses it's incredible clout to mismanage the web is it actively chips away at the web's stability. The goofiness the CA/B is up to is similar: Over 80% of organizations have outages every year due to certificate issues, and some absolutely clueless folks think 47 day certificate lifetimes is a good decision. The web in 2025 is incredibly fragile, and all signs lead to Google continuing to try to make it more fragile. You could pull in dozens of examples of centralizing forces that ensure one engineer pushing a bad configuration at one company takes down 40% of the web.

The Web is not Android. Apps on it should not break because you didn't submit a new version which updates to the latest platform framework within the last six months. Something on the web should, ideally, continue to work in perpetuity, unless acted on by an outside force (most likely by the site owner failing to continue paying the bill).

XSLT exists, it's supported by every major browser right now, and it should be nearly illegal to remove it.

spankalee 294 days ago

The barrier is incredibly high. I'd be pretty surprised if this process takes less than five years because the bar is so high.

Also you keep saying "Google" and ignoring that all the vendors are tentatively in support of this. What if Olli had opened the issue? He raised it at WHATNOT.

Some of what your saying could be confusion on the part of many people about what a standard is and isn't... And I think that while I don't necessarily agree that Google shouldn't be involved, I think this confusion is in the neighborhood of your concerns. It used to be much more the case, and indeed with other standards work it is the case, that a corporate entity was just another schmoe and people didn't necessarily have so much reflexive deference perhaps? Thank you for posting this honest opinion.

spankalee 294 days ago

Also, Mason is one if the nicest guys I know, and this is his job. I really don't think he's sad about a bunch of people misinterpreting what's going on and freaking out about it.

samdoesnothing 294 days ago

> while they destroy the web

Don't you think you're being a little bit dramatic? The chances of anybody who isn't an ubernerd caring about XSLT's removal is exactly 0.

XSLT specifics? Yes, ubernerd ... Person who can't get a doctor's appointment because the interactive voice menu which is somehow now based on a browser engine and has a subtle bug caused by this change could be anyone.

joshuamorton 294 days ago

Is there some specific reason you think xslt removal is likely to cause this (because it is used in interactive voice menus)?

Or is your complaint here reducible to "changes in browsers can cause bugs, and bugs can harm consumers" for which the solution is "browsers must never change anything", which is of course also harmful to consumers (like when an xslt parser bug is used to steal my bank details)

I have personally witnessed web technology related components in the critical path of complex enterprise insurance systems. Setting aside things like the whole of .NET being steeped in web browser components, and the added complexity of being forced to isolated these components by the court, things like Selenium are used for getting around integration and licensing problems. It isn't right, it isn't efficient, it will be a year long project to change them... We've already seen outages caused by XML engines dereferencing domains that aren't available anymore causing subtle and hard to find bugs. People don't realize that we built a lot of cool stuff on XML and semantic web stuff that all works and is all needed in various ways! It would not surprise me if web browser automation is not central to a ton of backend integration and automation for absolute sure.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

joshuamorton 293 days ago

You understand that XSLT isn't xml, right? This change will probably have a 0% impact on selenium or similar browser automation.

[flagged]

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

That's fair.

The better phrased version of my criticism is that voice menus are generally not rendered using a web browser and thus deprecating xslt in web browsers cannot possibly affect them.

You can certainly use XSLT with https://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml20/ have you built software on any Linux platform? XSLT is required in so much stuff.

And did you render it in chrome?

Nobody is killing xslt in general, just the web browser bindings.