Midas Inaugural Message
Midas Inaugural Message
This is the inaugural message on the Macintosh Internet Developers Association mailing list. You've been pre-subscribed to this list because your input will be very valuable in helping establish the charter for this group, its goals, mission, and the impact it will have on the Macintosh community.
This was the first message on the MIDAS mailing list, from Chuck Shotton, cshotton@biap.com, Mon, Jul 29, 1996.
Now, on to the meat of the proposal. It's become quite clear in the last few months that the pace of Internet development on the Mac is outrunning the ability of the informal Mac community (and Apple) to keep it organized in a way that benefits users and developers. In the past, we had the luxury of time (and relatively few commercial pressures) to come up with neat stuff like Internet Config, the Get URL suite, common file formats, etc. Unfortunately, pressures of the market, increases in user demands, and the short lifecycle of Internet applications have caused a lot of the community that existed between Mac Internet developers to dissolve, taking the planning, standards, and cooperation with it.
So here is the proposal. The Macintosh Internet Developers Association would be formed to provide a clearinghouse for standards proposals, a point through which Mac Internet tools, techniques, and resources would be distributed, and provide a framework for working groups and development teams to work to take the Mac to its fullest potential on the Internet. This group would determine how to support existing or emerging Internet standards on the Mac as well as propogating these standards (and standards the group creates) across Mac Internet applications.
My role in this effort is limited to hosting this mailing list midas@biap.com and the temporary web site for MIDAS which will soon be on the air at http://www.biap.com/midas/ (in addition to simply participating as a MIDAS member). I'd like to toss out the first topic for discussion as well. Namely, "what should the charter of this organization be?"
Please note that while we are formulating the charter and goals of this group, it would be helpful (I think) to limit participation in this list to people who A) are shipping an Internet related product on the Mac and B) have an interest in (re)creating a powerful, independent developer community on the Mac centered around Internet standards and applications. If you know of someone that should be on this list but isn't, please forward them this message and ask them to subscribe to the list. The more people involved, the better the charter will fit the needs of all Mac Internet developers. For new members to subscribe, they should send e-mail with a subject of "subscribe" to midas@biap.com.
Thanks for participating!
Chuck
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