War of the standards

Things have really hit the fan this past week. It all started with Björn Höhrmann leaving the W3C with an open letter, soon followed by an angry reaction by none other than Jeffrey Zeldman and then the snowball really took off.

The topic was further questioned by Eric Meyer in Angry Indeed and Molly E. Holzschlag in Misplaced Anger.

What is happening here? Are the embittered generals (term borrowed by Daniel Glazman) defecting one by one? How could anything like this happen to W3C – the defender of Truth, Justice and the Standard Way?

Relax. For standardistas who’s been around for a while, none of this come as any surprise, but I understand if some may be surprised by this sudden outrage by the standards community. The truth is that it’s a long story and many people have strong feelings for this issue. Even though respected names such as David Byron offers some advice for moving forward, things will probably continue to stir for a while.

Meanwhile, have a look at the next big thing, microformats. It will soon be all over the place, whether W3C likes it or not.