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

• From: Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer <schnitz@m...>
• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 12:29:09 +0200

I think you're going a bit too far:

- The whole patent bullshit was there before
the W3C. The W3C is just trying to deal with it.
Corporate patent lawyers harvesting nearly
everything they pick up from developers in their
coffee break at big software companies and filing 
those patents (aka "inventions") to even more 
uninformed government patent agencies is the more 
serious problem.

- The W3C is just trying to do the right thing in
this hairy issue. The good thing is that the W3C 
acutally listens to the outside world. If some
proposed idea is bad - we can tell them - they
will listen - they will react. That's actually
pretty good for any organization that size. 

- "I do not find the W3C performance in these areas 
credible as a standards organization." Wait a minute!

You're arguing that the W3C should become an
"ex post facto" standards body again, standardizing
"technology fully understood and available for
implementation". Giving that thinking today we would 
never have XML, XSLT, XPath or even HTML and the Web 
itself in our hands. Someone has to pioneer this 
stuff! This is XML-DEV, right? Who came up with XML,
Microsoft? Oasis? The Pentagon? Shall we wait for
them to develop "best practise" industry approaches
and then have the W3C just put a stamp on it?

To recall, the whole idea behind the W3C is exactly
to have the industry come together and share their
collective experiences and requirements from the
markets and then develop something universal based on 
that. Worked pretty well so far, I'd say.

- Sebastian


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@i...]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 3:25 PM
> To: Champion, Mike; xml-dev@l...
> Subject: RE: W3C as Golden Goose (was RE:  [Fwd: W3C 
> ridiculous
> n ewpolicy on patents])
> 
> 
> That the W3C is formulating policy with regards to patents is 
> sensible.   Leaving this without process control is a serious 
> blunder.   Attempting to become a standards organization is a 
> different problem.   As long as it was making recommendations, 
> these could be considered experimental, be allowed to run 
> overtime or undertime, be minimal in nature, and be forgotten 
> quickly.   By attempting to be a standards organization, the 
> processes, the goals, and the projects have to reflect a more 
> industry practice approach to picking and managing projects, 
> that is, standards should not be technologyInVitro, but technology 
> fully understood and available for implementation.  Churning in 
> the tools and the standards represent major and unacceptable 
> cost risks.  I do not find the W3C performance in these areas 
> credible as a standards organization.
> 
> len
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Champion, Mike [mailto:Mike.Champion@S...]
> 
> 
> Here's the way the W3C defines the problem:
> 
> 
> a procedure for launching new standards development activities as
>     Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) Licensing Mode activities
>     (sections 4 and 5);
> 
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