Simon Willison’s Weblog

Learning from smart tags

15th June 2002

Scott Andrew LePera in a mail to Webdesign-L (sent on the 12th of June, I’m catching up on my mailing list folders):

What I learned from the smart tags issue:

1. A company that owns over 90% of the market can pull the rug out from all of us, whenever it wants.
2. The cry of a million developers *can* make a difference.
3. The integrity of content is far more important than any other consideration in Web design. Go ahead, allow users to change font size, impose their own stylesheets, turn off JavaScript and images.

But touch my words, use them as jumping points for third-party sponsorships? There’d better be a check in the mail for me.

Etiquette question: What is accepted etiquette for posting quotes from mailing list material? Webdesign-L does not maintain publically accessible archives anywhere, but is a veritable gold mine of information. Should I consider everything on the list as fair game to be blogged whenever it takes my interest (obviously maintaining credit to the original writer) or should I contact authors for permission first? No comments system yet, so see my contact page if you have a reply.