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Comment by ucaetano | Hacker News Reader

> while AMP was supposedly "open", Google teams such as Gmail and Search would implement it however they wanted, and that no open governance would impact them at all

And that's exactly how any open standard works, isn't it?

Or were you expecting that some standard board would have power over Google (or any other company) and be able to dictate how Google (or any other company) can implement the standard or not?

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Your statement is overly broad, open standards bodies certainly can and have shaped how Google and others implement things, and will continue to do so. Standing up an open standards body in itself does not create pressure though it has to be stood up with backing by different groups with vested interest in guiding the design. This is where the AMP open standards group failed.

Different groups such as... Yahoo and Microsoft?

https://verizon-postmaster.tumblr.com/post/183699380323/amp-...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook-Blog/Support-...

Users of AMP do not necessarily have a vested interest in the design beyond "I'm able to use it if I want". This is e.g. the difference (or at least was for the last ~decade) between mail.yahoo.com using a web feature vs Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari implementing a web feature.

How about this then? There are members from Microsoft, Twitter, and Pinterest on the project's technical steering committee: https://github.com/ampproject/meta-tsc

This is not new information, it just brings us back to where the conversation started. I'm not pointing out that there wasn't an open standards body or that big name corporations were not part of it I'm pointing out none of these had/have a vested interest and bigger control of the implementation beyond how it is consumed.

You don't think engineers at major companies using the standard have a vested interest in how it is designed? Even considering that those engineers are on a committee whose entire purpose is to influence the design of the developing standard?

Individual engineers may or may not, those companies however stand to make no change in margin by agreeing or disagreeing with Google on how the AMP works behind the scenes.

There are number of different definitions for "open standards". Requirements for open standard often include restrictions for the process and completeness.

such as:

* Further development must be open for anyone to participate in

* Further development must be open for anyone to view

* Technologically mature standards must be implemented by multiple vendors or an open reference implementation

You're absolutely right. Those are key elements for the developments of open standards!

Is it perhaps possible that "further development" in this context refers to development of the standard, and does not come with any notion of open governance of implementation?

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