[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: (Second) Last Call for XPointer 1.0
The W3C differs because of its role as a specification owner and technology incubator. In simple terms, "from those who have more, more is expected." They are the authority. They have the knowledge. Unlike the patent office which uses incompetence as the excuse, I don't think the W3C gets off the hook that easily. They are not an industry: they are an industry representative. They can ask a very large community any time they need to answer a question. The patent office doesn't query the internet although it might not be a bad idea. If it only clobbers HTML, then it becomes a force to move us toward XML+stylesheets and away from a single downtranslation target. Would you consider a strategy that says, HTML is targeted for extinction by environmental pressure from the patent office and Sun? I doubt it but that is a potential outcome if we a) need XPointer b) are uncomfortable with the agreeement B may be up for grabs, but we won't abandon fragment based addressing. We could kiss off XPointer and use another spec, or just agree to ignore the patent and perhaps boycott Sun products until they relent. Again, pitchforks, torches and a mob are not the kind of rule of law one prefers, but sometimes effective given a monster in the mill and a policemen with one wooden arm. As for the patent office excuse, I agree, but Daniel, with all the power and money in the world, we haven't figured out how to count votes in this country. Don't think we aren't embarassed by it. On the other hand, information theory says nothing we try will fix that problem. Noisy systems can't reliably resolve binary decisions without external controls. In this case, the patent office and the W3C might want to have a relationship of mutual information sources when the competence of one can be trusted to resolve the lack of information of another. Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Veillard [mailto:Daniel.Veillard@i...] Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 11:21 AM To: Bullard, Claude L (Len) Cc: Daniel.Veillard@i...; Jonathan Borden; Elliotte Rusty Harold; xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: (Second) Last Call for XPointer 1.0 On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:49:41AM -0600, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > Frankly, it may be a case as Trafford says where > the industry ignores the patent rather than going > to the trouble and expense of contesting it. The > W3C may not be able to ignore it. The result is > the same: XPointer is DOA. Why should W3C differ from the industry in this case ? If everybody consider the claim invalid, why should it be W3C which would go through the expensive action of fighting it if the patent itself if moot ? > The next problem would be, can everyone live with > ignoring XPointer or Sun or both? As a free software implementor, I read Sun's terms and while I disagree with the fact that they were granted this patent, their condition were fine by me. It is very clear that they cannot sue me for my libxml XPointer implementation. You may have others needs, but for XPointer implementation itself the term emitted by sun were fine. What point is blocking you ? Now, if you want to implement something different than XPointer you may have issues with Sun's patent, but this must not block XPointer, right ? Now one third way would be to have a legal advice on whether the patent would *actually* cover any XML resource. The wording excerpt which was propagated here clearly stated that the claim was linked to HTML usage. And XPointer do not target HTML, so is this whole story moot because it's a non problem ? Is defining a fragment identifier syntax able to locate string in a markup based resource something we have to forget about until this Patent expires ? If this is the conclusion of this discussion, this is depressing !!! (and sorry there is *no* excuses to the current policy of the Patent Office, as Alan Cox puts it: "Selling Monopoly right to Common Sense for 25 Years" http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/geekgod-cox-largeview.jpg ).
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