RE: [www-vrml] Tim BL Is Baffled, Too

["Tony Parisi" <tparisi@mediamachines.com>]

Hi Miriam,

> 
> Tony Parisi wrote:
> 
> >>I have to say that the consortium has opened up its doors somewhat more
> >>recently. I'm glad, and hope it continues to open up further.
> >
> > Recently? It's been wide open to anybody with $100US for four or five
> years
> > now.
> 
> That is what I mean about closed doors. Who has US$100 to spare? I
> certainly don't. I live way below the poverty line. And if I have little
> money imagine how the average student manages.
> 
> There is a temptation these days to consider people who don't have money
> to be not worth considering, but that is a short-sighted view. If VRML/X3D
> is not to go (more) stale it needs constant infusion of new blood.
> Barriers to that work against it. And nobody knows where the next round of
> brilliant ideas will come from to revolutionise 3d. I may be money-poor,
> but I am information-rich and this is the case with increasing numbers of
> people now.
>

Sure thing. Understood. This is exactly why community participation is so
important to us. I don't think anybody inside Web3D management or the
membership would disagree with you.

However, Web3D itself is an industry consortium, not a model rocket club. It
can't operate as a hobbyist organization-- unless of course it only intends
to produce hobbyist results. But that is *not* the intent: our charter is to
produce and promote industry standards for interoperability. To achieve
those goals it needs resources. I would think everybody can understand this.
Compared to the industry at large, Web3D's membership structure has got to
be the most inclusive around. $100US is chicken feed.

Personally, I don't see any incompatibility between community involvement
and industry participation. I think Neil and others have done a great job in
this recent thread to outline possible reasons for why the two camps tend to
be antagonistic toward each other: it's through circumstance rather than by
design. The best way to counter this is outreach and communication.

But this is a two-way street. I see Neil bending over backwards now to reach
out to the community right now. This is a great thing. But it appears to be
one-sided, at least from my point of view. Take this thread, for example. I
started it by forwarding the TimBL quip, with the good intention of
stimulating dialog. My reward has been to be personally insulted twice in
the space of two days. I don't see how this helps anyone. Maybe the
community should start thinking about keeping itself in check so as not to
disenfranchise those of us breaking our backs to push this thing forward.
It's not in the least bit helpful to the effort.
 
> 
> > Second, there is a fallacy here about process. To think that hundreds of
> > users, authors and students you cite can *design a system* together is
> quite
> > naïve. It just doesn't work that way. The broader group can be deeply
> > involved in defining requirements and reviewing designs all throughout
> the
> > process, but the actual design can only be done by a *very small* group.
> In
> > a perfect world, that's 1-5 people. With working groups and open
> process, it
> > tends to be double that size. But beyond size, that the process simply
> > becomes unmanageable.
> 
> While I disagree slightly on actual numbers (I tend to side with Alan
> there), nevertheless I do agree completely with what you say. The problem
> is in finding the people to populate the group. If you have a small group
> that becomes tired and burned out they will need to be replaced or
> supported by others until they have regenerated enough to get back into
> it. If your group can only draw from a small number of people then,
> through no fault of theirs, progress will slow and go stale. If, however,
> they have thousands of people to draw upon there will always be new people
> to step up to the plate and the dynamic won't be lost.
> 
> In any venture you will only ever have a small number of "movers", the
> others will mostly lurk. But the lurkers are far from unimportant. They
> are users and authors and occasionally new "movers". These things tend to
> self-select and rarely need explicit pruning.
> 

Agreed. Just to clarify, my background is in engineering, and I know from 20
years' experience that teams of > 6 simply don't work effectively. The
numbers are somewhat relaxed in a committee situation, but the same general
principles apply.

> 
> > (My opinion here) If anything, Web3D has had too many cooks and that has
> > resulted in some weird crap in X3D. If it was back in the day when we
> had a
> > VAG-- 8 of us, still 3 too many IMO-- X3D would have been done two years
> > sooner.
> 
> It will always be the case that many of us feel that any current version
> hasn't got it right. There has always been weird crap every version
> including VRML 1.0... I mean: SpinGroup{}??? and yet is was a brilliant
> idea because it was the only animation in that version I think (it has
> been a long time since I wrote any VRML 1.0).
> 

Fact: SpinGroup was *not* in VRML 1.0. That was a Live3D extension.

Anyway, the remainder snipped due to violent agreement! Thanks for your
participation. I agree, let's move on to something more productive.

Tony



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