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Comment by sharps_xp | Hacker News Reader

is there an decentralized org to ensure that all of the js css we use today remain backward compatible decades from now? or are we just at the whim of these browser vendors?

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For some part, W3C is supposed to serve this role, so to the extent that WHATWG controls the web platform, yes, yes we are. Part of the problem is, it’s not clear who exactly is supposed to participate in that hypothetical “decentralized” organization—browser vendors do consult website operators, but on occasion[1] it becomes clear that they only care about the largest ones, whose interests are naturally quite different from the long tail (to the extent that it still exists these days). And this situation is in part natural, economically speaking, because of course the largest operators are the ones that are going to have the most resources to participate in that kind of thing, so money will inevitably end up being the largest determinant of influence.

[1] https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/issues/1255

That's an unfair characterization. WHATWG doesn't version the spec like W3C did, but it's no less backwards compatible. See their FAQ [1], or just load the 1996 Space Jam site [2] in your modern browser.

[1]: https://whatwg.org/faq#change-at-any-time

[2]: https://www.spacejam.com/1996/

Thus far, WHATWG has mostly behaved benevolently, true. But because they have stayed benevolent for now doesn’t mean we’re going to be any less at their mercy the moment they decide not to. As the recent XSLT discussion aptly demonstrates, both browser vendors and unaffiliated people are quite willing to do the “pay up or shut up” thing for old features, which is of course completely antithetical to backwards compatibility.

> XSLT

Very rarely used, so two better examples:

* http://

Now mostly unusable.

* Quirks mode

Netscape navigator or Internet Explorer compatibility (no <!doctype html>). Still supported by browsers for rendering old pages. Must be annoying to maintain. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Guides/Qui...

LibreOffice can open AppleWorks files from 1984.

And if it couldn't, you could run these old programs in a VM, and I expect that to continue essentially forever, so I see no future problem viewings these browser files.

The browsers and standards groups do prioritize backwards compatibility and have done a very good job at it. The only real web compatibility breakages I know of have to do with pre-standardized features or third-party plugins like Flash.

The engines are open source, no? I don't think we should break websites on purpose but keeping everything backwards compatible does seem untenable for decades to come.

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