Mobile Interoperability: Mobile Developer Community takes a stance against aggressive usage of reformatting proxies
The recent introduction of reformatting proxies on the networks of Vodafone, Sprint and other carriers has caused a wave of pain for thousands of mobile sites. Apparently, those transcoders have totally spoilt the intended user-experience by adapting the content of already optimized sites.
The discussion about content reformatting is not new. It was initiated last year by Vodafone UK when they decided to switch millions of WAP users over to a new reformatting proxy, thus causing a strong reaction in the developer community.
An interesting initiative has taken shape in the community of mobile web developers over the past few days.
It appears that operators have been implementing reformatting proxies which (try to) enable users of mobile phones to see shrunk versions of regular websites. Apparently, those reformatting proxies are too aggressive and do not pay enough attention to the needs of mobile developers who invest time and energy to get mobile sites working optimally on mobile devices.
For these reasons, developer have come up with a “Developer Manifesto for Responsible Reformatting” which clearly spells out the rules that reformatting proxies should follow
to preserve the mobile ecosystem.
“It is a question of Net Neutrality”, says Luca Passani of WURFL fame, who is driving the initiative.
A developer has the right to access all the headers that a mobile device has inserted in the HTTP request, without the risk that a proxy hijacks and modifies those headers behind the back of users and content providers.
We are not asking vendors of reformatting proxy to go out of business. We are just asking them and operators to be good citizens in the mobile ecosystem and respect everyone’s right to have a platform to develop on.
Luca and the WURFL Community are raising a very important important issue here, and I wish to express my full support for the Developers’ cause against intrusive reformatting proxies.
Roberto Galoppini, and 
Andrea Trasatti 12:36 pm on March 26, 2008 Permalink
Roberto,
this is nothing new, really. The W3C has had a Task Force writing a guideline for a few months. The Task Force works completely open and everyone is welcome to add their comments on the mailing list.
The editor’s drafts have been public for quite some time and they are not so different from what Luca is promoting. See the Content Transformation Guidelines.
This is why I think that while the manifesto certainly shows clearly the frustration of the developers, I don’t see much need for it if not to join forces with who has been working on this for months (also getting involved network operators and vendors such as Novarra and Drutt).
Roberto Galoppini 4:53 pm on March 26, 2008 Permalink
Ciao Andrea,
nice to hear from you again. The reason behind my support to the initiative is, as you mention, the frustration of the developers. Hindsight is always better to listen to developers’ frustrations, at the end of the day they are building our small (fragmented) mobile world, isn’t it?
Luca Passani 5:41 pm on March 26, 2008 Permalink
Andrea, it is the same topic, but it is not the same solution.
The Manifesto aims at being much more effective than W3C has managed to be so far.
Anyway, interested readers can find the discussion here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wmlprogramming/message/27166
Luca