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RE: RE: W3C Rants (was: RE: W3C as Golden Goose ...)

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Dave Winer <dave@u...>, xml-dev@l...
• Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 10:39:53 -0500

I hope earnestly for your success, but my experience 
is that by dint of how they have organized themselves, 
without RAND, they won't get the support they need. Do 
we need the W3C?  I think so.  Corporations still need a 
place to come together and search for consensus.  Does 
the web need the W3C?  I think so.  Without a means 
and a place to seek consensus, we will have only the 
naked competitive forces to drive the evolution of 
the technologies we metaphorically call "the web". 
I see the W3C being balanced by other organizations 
such as OASIS.  Where one puts support for some 
given work should be selectable.  We should preserve 
options.   Many forces are at work here and by 
submitting to the delusion of the W3C as all powerful, 
as somehow morally majestic, we have created this 
current circumstance and made certain results predictable.

The web is not an entity.  It has no will.  There is 
just us.  We should recognize that.  I restate a 
belief taught by the Buddha, a practical belief. 
Three things contribute to what is loosely 
termed evil, but perhaps are just bad results:  greed, 
ill will, and delusion.   It is easy to attack the 
first under the aegis of the others, but the outcome 
will still be bad results and we become the thing 
we resist.  We have to find the middle way. 
I see RAND as some trying to do that.  

Is it the right way?  As Simon asked, for whom?

That said, let me read your position paper to see what 
course you have in mind.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@u...]

Bravo Claude.

When it was time to submit SOAP 1.1 to the W3C, there was an issue of
assignment of IP rights. I gladly turned over all our rights in the SOAP
protocol to the W3C without a second thought. In the future, I will not do
that if it means contributing for free something that other W3C members are
trying to control.

I joined the Web because it stood against the kind of control that it is now
flirting with recognizing. I'm in favor of smoking out the greed, make the
W3C incompatible with patents because the Web is incompatible with patents.
If the W3C turns away from the Web, the Web will go on without the W3C. It
stands for something -- that's why I got involved.

I wrote a position paper on this on Sunday that I would like to now insert
into the record.

http://davenet.userland.com/2001/09/30/patentsAndTheW3c

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