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

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer <schnitz@m...>
• Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 08:29:32 -0500

I have said the reading of the text confirms 
the danger of not having patent policies.

We did a long thread earlier in the year 
in which the conclusion is that the IP worth owning 
is patents, and that companies that want to 
profit by IP will pursue them relentlessly.  
We didn't make the problem; it is there. 
The W3C is trying to deal with it as others 
have in a business-like way.  Finally...

As for their performance, it is easy when 
the bank accounts are flush.  Let's see how 
they fare as economic conditions remove 
the abundant free labor supply and the 
work force narrows to member contributions 
from thosw who understand the value 
of their patents in a consortium that 
enables them to lock in market share 
by pretending to offer standards over 
specifications.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer [mailto:schnitz@m...]

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.

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