Every company needs a one-sentence summation of its philosophy. In Microsoft's case, it's "a computer on every desk and in every home." At Netscape, it's "open Internet standards" and the "Internet/intranet revolution." A revolution that Netscape wants to lead for the good of the Internet and its users - and for the good of its business, of course.
"The definition is incredibly tied up in marketing rhetoric, but an open standard is a piece of technology whose implementation remains with the provider, but whose interface specification can be adopted freely and openly by anyone," explains Carl Cargill, Netscape's standards representative.
Netscape's pledge appears prominently on its Web site, and the company recently created the Open Standards Guarantee to underscore the crucial difference between its products and those of its competitors.
But Netscape's oft-repeated pledges and guarantees - and its concurrent dismissal of competitors like Microsoft as mere manipulators in the quest for open technology standards - blur when set against the company's actions in the war to control the process in a competitive, high-stakes marketplace.
"I'm sympathetic to that problem [delays in getting standards approved], but I'm not sympathetic to Netscape's desire to work both sides of the street," says Nick Shelness, fellow and chief messaging architect at Lotus, who wrote an open letter last year to Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen pleading his case. "I don't object to them developing proprietary products to gain an edge, but when senior people like Marc claim that everyone else is more proprietary, that's really disingenuous and unfortunate."
Microsoft's arrival changed the rules
The open standards goal is to create uniform ways for products to display HTML, JavaScript, and other important Internet technologies. That makes it easier for developers and users to create and view Web pages, and for both to mix together products and still have them work.
When Netscape and Microsoft build special extensions to HTML and other Internet-based languages that work (at first) with their own products, both claim to be adding unique capabilities and features. In the early days of the Web, Netscape held the advantage, and many of their technologies became de facto standards before the specifications were published or approved by bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium. But Microsoft's emergence in the Internet market has changed the rules, and added more force to the W3C's recommendations.
"Microsoft supports open standards like no one ever has before. Before the ink is dry, they have working code," says Jonathan Hirschman, executive producer for Time Inc.'s new media department, and an ex-member of the HTML review board for the W3C. "Tim [Berners-Lee] said early on, 'listen boys, we can't compete on specs anymore, let's only compete on features."
Unfortunately, distinguishing between new specifications that require universal adoption and new features that improve a product is like comparing shades of gray. In the past, the definition of "standards compliant" was gauged by testing a product with Netscape Navigator - the de facto standard browser. Now that Microsoft's Internet Explorer commands 30 percent or more of the market, that's harder. More and more, developers are finding that "open standards" and "interoperability" are notions that live only in press releases.
"We've quit using anything with Java or JavaScript on our site, because it's not fair to our readers. When we rate other sites, if they don't work with both browsers, they are labeled inadequate. We've run across too many cases where it [JavaScript] causes IE or Navigator to crash," says Becky Swann, president of the International Real Estate Digest, a large real-estate Web site.
The variation in implementations is causing sites developed for one leading browser to look different on the other. If developers want to ensure that a site will be equally accessible to both browsers, they must create two different versions - or stick with a generic version adhering to baseline HTML still shared by both, and wait for the bells and whistles to be approved as standard. And Netscape, some observers say, is blurring the line between "open" and "standard" as much - if not more - than its competition.
"Netscape is coming out with innovative standards that they claim are open, but they are really proprietary," says Eric Arnum, editor of Electronic Mail and Messaging Systems, a 20-year-old newsletter that closely tracks that market. "They'll propose a standard, it becomes a draft, and two weeks later they say they're the only one whose product supports it. It's not full disclosure - they're playing the proprietary game, but calling it something else."
Arnum and others say that Netscape's mail and messaging implementations in its Collabra client and server are just one example of proprietary implementations that cause interoperability problems with competing Microsoft and Lotus products. Netscape's Andreessen, however, argues just the opposite - that Microsoft and Lotus products are more proprietary.
Similar accusations have been made about Netscape's promotion of the tag in JavaScript that was shot down by the W3C review board in favor of similar methods found in Cascading Style Sheets. (Both the layer tag and CSS are used to position elements on Web pages.) Netscape's Cargill says the company simply doesn't always agree with W3C recommendations.
"We implemented a tag that users found helpful, and the W3C then decided they didn't want tags any more. But users want tags and, by the way, they have the money," says Cargill. He went on to say that users "tell us to cooperate, but they tend to buy nonstandard products. The IT industry has always been told to cooperate, but then users say, 'Wow, that's a neat feature,' and a lot of vendors are being rewarded for being nonstandard."
The long and winding road
The process of getting a standard blessed by the W3C, the IETF, or other bodies is neither simple nor swift. It's like watching a bill work its way through the House, Congress, and the White House. Any number of snags or political maneuverings can delay its ultimate approval.
Although any member of a standards body can propose new standards - or more often, extensions of existing standards - to a review board, those familiar with the Internet standards process say that Netscape and Microsoft hold most of the cards. Discussion of draft standards can take months or even years to play out - although with the big two more heavily involved, the process has accelerated. And although it makes final recommendations on standards adoption, the W3C and other bodies have no enforcement abilities.
"The goal of W3C is to ensure the interoperability of the Web, and in the long range that's realistic, but in the short range we're not going to play Web cops for compliance," says Sally Khudairi of the W3C. "Because things happen quickly, if you have your company going in one direction, it's not easy to redirect or pull back, and we can't force members to implement things."
Ironically, given its reputation in the computer industry, Microsoft has recently taken on a role as open standards stickler, implementing new IETF and W3C standards in its products and boasting about its intent to be the first with each. "I hate to say anything nice about Microsoft, but they and Lotus are really the most open," says Electronic Mail and Messaging's Arnum of the companies' messaging and workgroup products.
One developer speculates that Microsoft's motive is to "pump up the relevancy of the W3C." By playing the game well, and demanding that everyone use relatively similar implementations of HTML, ECMAScript (the standards body moniker for JavaScript), and other important Internet standards, Microsoft can level the technical playing field. That would shift the competition between products to non-technical areas like marketing, sales, and distribution - the real Microsoft muscle.
"Our view is that HTML is too important to hijack," says Cornelius Willis, director of Microsoft's platform marketing. "Our goal is to be absolutely compliant to ECMA (European Computer Manufacturer's Association) and all other standards," and Netscape's does not support ECMAScript, the Document Object Model, and HTML 4.0 in Navigator, he added. He also cites the same proprietary Netscape additions detailed by Lotus' Shelness in his open letter.
Sources close to the company say that earlier this year, Netscape became disillusioned with the W3C process, partly because execs felt the W3C was starting to side more with Microsoft on proposed standards. But others say that the company's mood has since shifted. "There was a lot of negativity about the W3C in the hallways, but we helped convince them that it can bear fruit," said Tim Bray, a Netscape consultant.
In May, Netscape's representative to the W3C's HTML editorial review board failed to appear at a final meeting on HTML 4.0, a standard that is supposed to be supported in virtually all of Netscape's newest products. The chairman of the working group overseeing HTML 4.0 noted publicly at the opening of the meeting that Netscape wasn't living up to its membership very well. "We would like to have seen them there, but I think you'll see them support this," Dan Connolly now says. (Meanwhile, the W3C is rewriting its membership charter to more explicitly describe member responsibilities.)
With the Netscape-originated and widely used scripting language JavaScript, Netscape avoided the W3C altogether - because, Cargill says, it was "the most contentious spec ever produced," and the company wanted a review board that "wasn't mired in politics."
Cargill says Netscape sought out ECMA to approve JavaScript last November because it believed the lesser-known standards body would be able to quickly and objectively administer the process. Microsoft charged Netscape with purposefully delaying the approval process, and with failing to release JavaScript source code that could be integrated into its Internet Explorer browser. When Netscape sought ECMA approval, Microsoft and Cisco promptly joined the body's general assembly. An open standard "ECMAScript" was subsequently born in late June.
More recently, a W3C working group was responsible for standardizing the Extensible Markup Language (XML) - a flexible, more detailed metalanguage for defining and presenting data over the Internet, which is seen as the next great frontier of Web development beyond HTML. After Tim Bray, the editor of the XML specification, was hired by Netscape as a consultant, Microsoft officials cried foul and pressured the W3C to take Bray off the XML review board. In an email sent to ChannelWorld, a developer site that closely tracks XML events, Thomas Reardon, a program manager at Microsoft, wrote, "I raised the issue with them [W3C] of whether or not it's a good precedent for companies to 'buy out' working groups. I think it's a very bad precedent, I've said so publicly repeatedly. I also think it's a bad idea to contaminate a functioning WG with money in any form."
With importance comes pressure
The allegations of 'contamination' of the working group prompted Web creator Tim Berners-Lee to write a post-facto policy that any board member changing affiliations during the review process must undergo a conflict-of-interest reevaluation. In the XML group, a compromise was reached when a Microsoft representative, Jean Pauli, was appointed to co-edit the specifications alongside Bray.
"A lot of people got really pissed, and I was one of them. I objected to getting fired as a result of their [Microsoft's] discomfort," said Bray.
As the importance of the standards bodies grows, the interest and pressure exerted by vendors in the working groups is sure to increase along with the competition. In the end, it appears, developers will have to get used to writing and debugging content on two different platforms, says Netscape's Cargill, adding, "but that type of situation has always existed." And he argues that standards should evolve dynamically as the market drives them.
"The idea of the Internet is to encourage multiple implementations and force people to change. If the process works correctly, the question will become how quickly can you standardize features and make everyone else do them as a standard. Then you get to the next iteration, and the market will drive the standards," Cargill says. Microsoft's Reardon claims that full - and "above board" - participation in the standards process would allow 80 percent of resulting products and features to interoperate, with the remaining 20 percent determined by the market.
"Netscape thought they were going to be the leaders of a revolution, and are now realizing they're just another guy in a suit," said Arnum. "Welcome to the world of commerce - we're all just guys in suits."
Special Report Coverage:
Part 1: Netscape Sheds Its Baby Skin
Part 2: Building the Networked Enterprise
Part 3: Not-So-Open Standards
Part 4: Playing Politics
Part 5: Netscape Work Culture
