[leoc]

Ah yes, the Open Web, brought to you by MS, Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Op^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H. Remember, if there's anything you don't like about their decisions, you can change things just by starting your own web brower and getting your first hundred million users.

[wycats]

I hate to agree with this troll, but I don't see how to disagree :(

[leoc]

Thanks—though I'm not a troll. Here's a longer discussion of the problem and what could be done about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6810259 .

A more straightforward response would just be to call for HTML to be brought back under the control of the W3C. There are certainly merits to that, but at the same time a) W3C has its own obvious flaws as the overlord of HTML, b) no matter how benevolent a dictator W3C would or could be, even democratic (or quasi-semi-democratic) control is not the same thing as actual openness in the form of de facto (not just notional) forkability, and c) there's no easy and obvious way to get the yoke of W3C control back on the necks of the browser-vendor cartel, no matter how desirable it might be.

Regardless, one important first step is for people in general to have a clear-eyed view of what the present situation really is. One necessary part of that is for people to stop having a reflexive feel-good response to the 'Open Web' slogan.

[baldfat]

Troll is wrong. Engineers don't make things that are dependent on closed standards (stares at different frameworks especially cocoa touch framework). We don't need a new Flash!

[leoc]

I'm not a troll. It's pretty obvious that the Web is significantly more open than Flash or iOS or what have you. That's not sufficient to make it open.