>I hope this doesn't come across as tactless or gossipy, since the involved
>parties are here.
Not at all. Thisn is important.
>Are we seeing the beginnings of a rift in the WWW? Recent developments (W3O,
>the commercialization of Mosaic) have led me to wonder if there are two camps
>out there, that are becoming increasingly polarized:
I too have spotted a little fraying on the web and this is of *grave*
concern to me. Once a crack develops it is very difficult to repair.
There are, in theory, twenty million or so of us and my experience leads me
to believe that orchestrating that many people is virtually (sic)
impossible. If a crack exists then I suspect that people are falling into
it at the rate of tens every minute. Now, am *I* being paranoid?
> - the CERN-ites, which probably includes most of the people ...
No. I use the NCSA server.
> - the Mosaic-ites, which includes users that think that NCSA ...
No. I use lynx.
>My question is, is this bad? Does it matter? Is it even happening?
My two "no's" show that you make a not unreasonable but fundamental
mistake. I have no intention of following *anything* other then W3O
conventions and reccomendations. My concern is the size of the web. The
bigger the better and so two webs is, for me, an unmitigated disaster. If
the NCSA conference diverges from W3O then that is *terrible* for all of
us. Browsers immediately double in size!
>Now I probably shouldn't be throwing my unsubstantiated impressions ...
Well, as long as you know that NCSA/Mosaic is not a tablet of stone but
their server is robust and easy. I spent two weeks trying to put up the
CERN server. I had to substantially rebuild the "make" and gave up when
Rob McCool told me about the NCSA server and it went up a treat. As a new
unix user (six months ago) the CERN server tauught me more than anything so
far ... Put me down as NCSA/Lynx/W3O. ;)
>The renaming of NCSA's Mosaic conference to "The Second International WWW
>Conference-Mosaic and the Web" and its co-sponsorship by CERN is promising,
>but why is NCSA not involved with W3O? Or is it?
I don't know. They ought to be. I like to think of CERN as the spider's
lair but she has a mate and some children (hoohoo.ncsa.. ). Are they
getting divorced - will she eat him like the real thing - will he eat her
and turn the whole arachnid world upside down ...
>Flame away; I'd like to be wrong.
I'd like you to be wrong, unfortunately ...
Al. <-:< (zpalastair@grid.unl.ac.uk)