Net Neutrality in Software?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: Art Botterell <acb () incident com>
Date: October 26, 2006 11:03:18 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Net Neutrality in Software?

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Dave -

(For IP if you like...)

Meanwhile... the newly released Firefox 2 web browser demonstrates  
that net neutrality isn't just about carriers.

The details: A common challenge for web publishers is how to serve  
both the web and the RSS feed-reader audiences without duplication.   
A simple standards-based solution is to link the RSS or Atom XML file  
to an XSL stylesheet, causing modern browsers to display the content  
as HTML per the publisher's design.

Until now.  Seems the Mozilla team has decided that an RSS or Atom  
feed with XSL styling should never be viewed as designed by the  
publisher.  Instead, the user is compelled either to select an RSS  
feed reader or else view a "preview" as formatted by the browser.

Even Internet Exploiter gives users the option of viewing styled RSS  
files as their publisher intended. Looking at a number of bug reports  
about this from beta testers earlier this year, this choice seems to  
have been based on a belief that "your browser (developer) knows  
best" about the user experience... along with a belief that only a  
relatively few folks will complain... since it makes a few site  
designers look bad in a way hardly any of their visitors ever will  
understand... and so it's not really important.

Is this anything less than a software-based violation of net  
neutrality?  We like to assume that, so long as our carriers are  
transparent, our computers will be, too.  But what's the point of  
transparent nets if our browsers develop agendas of their own?

Just another reminder that the benefits of open source obtain only  
when users insist on integrity, and restrain the impulse to give open  
source developers a pass on points of principle.

- - Art

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