Mozilla’s CTO and JavaScript creator Brendan Eich and Microsoft’s Chris Wilson engaged in a war of words through their blogs about the next version of the JavaScript language.
Wilson and other critics have complained that their concerns are being suppressed and ignored by Brendan Eich and others. Several participants in the ES4-discuss mailing list claim that Adobe and Mozilla are authoring the spec in a manner that best suits their interests without consensus and that other parties are simply shouted down or ignored.
Eich and those who are satisfied with the current process and direction regard those allegations as FUD—baseless nontechnical criticisms that add nothing of value to the ECMASCript 4 process.
The crux of the argument lies in the concept that Microsoft proposes to develop a completely new language standard for Web scripting with support for the existing standard. Mozilla’s Eich feels that the move would only stall all the existing code in the present ECMA 3 standard and, at the same time, negatively affect a uniform implementation of the standard.
With the Web galloping on the technology front, controversies like these are bound to have a grave impact. There’s also the question as to whether a new standard is required at all.
More information:
- Mozilla and Microsoft battle over Javascript (NeoWin)
- Mozilla, Microsoft at odds over next Javascript (PC World | IDG News Service)
