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Comment by dougmccune | Hacker News Reader

This isn't rejecting the original argument. The argument that Larry Masinter made was that canvas, microdata, and RDFa are outside of the scope of the charter (as much as people wanted to believe, he was not arguing that they shouldn't be working on those items). Tim Berners Lee specifically says he agrees:

"The work of the group has grown since it was chartered, and the charter document itself is no longer sufficiently explicit."

There's no discrepancy here.

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To say, "There's no discrepancy here" may be literally true if you focus on the issue of scope, but it misses the larger point. TBL said no to what Adobe wanted. You also left out key parts of the respopnse. Here's a fuller version:

The work of the group has grown since it was chartered, and the charter document itself is no longer sufficiently explicit. (See recent W3C blog post on this topic [2]). This message clarifies what I consider to be within the scope of the group.

I agree with the WG chairs that these items -- data and canvas -- are reasonable areas of work for the group. It is appropriate for the group to publish documents in this area.

Right, and here's a message from Masinter:

I think it would be fine to update the charter to include 2D Context as actually within scope if that's what the working group proposes and the Director and AC agree.

I wouldn't object to that. (see http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2010Feb/0004...)

Compared to the recent message from TBL: I am asking the domain lead to annotate the charter

Unless there's a massive difference between update and annotate the charter that I'm unaware of those sound like exactly the same things.

I'm not saying that Masinter didn't have any ulterior motives (but I'm also not saying he did). But the facts of what people have said in this debate always seem to get ignored in favor of the evil Adobe storyline.

Politically, there is nothing Adobe can do now. TBL has the final say and he has spoken.

Adobe is just doing what is best for their shareholders. Can't blame them really.

Before HTML5, they had more of a monopoly than Microsoft had on the desktops when they were sued. Now Flash has competition with all the browsers. It's a mandate that they all have to do what they've just left to Adobe to handle with Flash.

It'll be an interesting show. I for one am very excited about this because it eliminates a lot of uncertainty about the web as a platform moving forward.

Best for shareholders?

It's not like they're making money from flash player. They're making money from content creation tools (i.e. Creative Suite). At this point it may be a bit easier for them to create Flash content but adding HTML5 to that mix should be doable. They are already creating native iphone apps with Flash authoring in CS5 (see http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/)

Content creators will want to create content that is accessible to a wide audience with a good user experience. They will buy the tools that will allow them to do so efficiently. If that means HTML5 then that is where the money is and that is what shareholders will demand Adobe to support (follow the money).

Furthermore HTML5 over Flash makes a good argument for people to buy upgrades to their Content Creation Tools. So there is even more money to be made with HTML5 for Adobe.

Are you suggesting that having a monopoly on a platform isn't good for a company trying to leverage tools to target that platform?

I'm mostly suggesting that Adobe's tools may not be tied to the Flash platform as much as it may seem.

It also means all those people trained on Flash are going to have to be retrained. Flash is kind of like Adobe's stake in the web world. Flash ruled the online video and graphics world. Everything else, there's a good enough competitor. But not flash, not really. Not until there is some real competition.

Adobe can make a lot of money on this, but it will be hard work and Steve Jobs called them lazy for a reason.

Adobe make the tools for creating Flash content. Not the only tools, I know, but the most widely used and supported tools. They also control the player, meaning new features added to the player will appear in Adobe tools first.

They'll adapt their tools to output HTML5, sure, just like Illustrator outputs SVG. They lose the control that they had with the Flash platform, though.

There is a big difference between "update" and "annotate". The former requires a multi-month review cycle with many opportunities for objection. The latter just happens (apparently).

In addition, the way Tim phrased it implies that these items are already arguably in scope, but let's make it more explicitly clear, as opposed to implying that they were out of scope and a change is needed for them to be in scope at all.

Yes, exactly -- it felt like he was giving a big eye-roll to Adobe, followed with a, "fine, if you're going to be annoying about it, I'm just going to add a clarification that says we've been doing the right thing." Which is what he appears to have already believed, but wants to make it explicit.

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