[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Why RAND RF May Be A Good Idea
The alledged tolls are already there. Proprietary products are available and popular. The flaw in this discussion is the inability of the participants to discriminate between a standard and a specification. If the goal is interoperability, then standards are needed for the technologies that facilitate that. These are usually low level technology (wherever that line is drawn). They are not needed for the products that do "useful work" in all cases. Flash, PDF etc prove that these technologies do useful work, are popular and in no way shape or form need the W3C imprimatur for those parts of the technology that are patentable. Yet these patented technologies do in fact provide for system stability as the market converges on them as the de facto "standard of use", really, a product standard. Specifications should be issued if the technology is really new and in need of multiple implementors or if after some years of development, no convergence has occurred. Note that in many cases, the adoption rate of such specifications may be at the rate of what is common in research projects making it possible for proprietary technologies to surpass and colonize (similar to the SGML/HyTime vs HTML history) by dint of simpler and more targeted applications. The W3C should be quite particular about which areas of technology it selects for candidates of specification. It should be quite thorough in uncovering the related patents. This will limit the W3C's activities to only those areas where facilitating emergence is necessary. Its role will be similar to DARPA's and in fact, it will work very closely with organizations such as DARPA even as it does now on the Semantic Web, an effort which is helping the commercialization of technology which DARPA has been facilitating for many years, and for which, patents probably exist. Getting all of the companies and individuals who hold patents to commit to only RF specifications is a noble goal. I think it will limit the role of the W3C in managing technology emergence and market development appropriately. Such a limitation will help to stabilize the web while making sure that research and market emergence for well-developed products occurs outside the control of the W3C. len
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