Dr Hopkirk is a respected advocate for <a title="Dr Andy Hopkirk on LinkedIn" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/andyhopkirk">“openness and interoperability of systems, of people, processes and information technologies”</a>. He has in the past, for example, been an invited observer at events such as <a title="Open Forum Europe" href="http://www.openforumeurope.org/">Open Forum Europe</a>.</p>
<p>However, at the time he was engaged to facilitate the Open Standards roundtable, while we were aware that he represented the <a title="National Computing Centre" href="http://www.ncc.co.uk/">National Computing Centre</a> on the <a title="Microsoft Interoperability Executive Customer Council" href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/featured/IECCouncil.aspx">Microsoft Interoperability Executive Customer Council</a> (along with 40 other CIOs/CTOs across the public and private sector who participate in a voluntary capacity) he did not declare the fact that he was advising Microsoft directly on the Open Standards consultation.</p>
<p>When this came to our attention we asked Dr Hopkirk for an explanation and he has told us that he has “not been paid to specifically write their response to the Open Standards consultation but he is engaged to help them tease out the issues”.

Ahem.

Developer Dave Balmer is not pleased:

Rarely do I find a need to call out the W3C folks (or anyone, for that matter), but the recent post by Daniel Glazman (@glazou), co-chair of the W3C CSS working group, pushed me over the edge.

In his article, he calls for everyone to, get this, stop using -webkit in their sites. He equates webkit, now a popular engine for most new mobile browsers, to IE6. Moreover, he calls it a “threat to the open web”.

<em>Seriously?</em>

Microsoft is dropping its own DX filters for CSS3 standard alternatives in IE10 (as it began to do with IE9). Essentially, Internet Explorer 10 is looking like the most standards-oriented browser Microsoft has produced since - and perhaps even more than - Internet Explorer 1.0.