[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: New W3C Patent Practice
Would the web be there if DoD hadn't let its work be commercialized? Would that have happened if DARPA hadn't sponsored Mosaic or James Clark (the other one) hadn't financed MARCA, or CERN hadn't paid for TimBL's place beneath the steampipe? I give credit to Doug Englebart, and he read Vannevar Bush. Bush was just trying to keep up with too much paperwork during a world war and never got around to getting it built. DARPA was looking for a way to keep on making war after a blowout, and Bolt Beranek and Neuman got the contract, and their first customer was Doug Englebart. It's never one individual, but they matter, yes they do. I live on the same planet. I just keep up with the details of history better than you because otherwise, I learn the wrong things. It was driven by multiple forces, some individual, some well organized and well-financed. You would still be futzing with OpenText if Goldfarb Mosher and Lorie hadn't been asked by their well-financed company IBM, to work out their problems of too much paperwork. I suspect overwork is a source of much innovation. I like the draft too. It is the outcome I campaigned for over "no non-RF ever" because historically, that made no sense. Unless they have some room to maneuver, they create too much paperwork and a patented but ubiquitous product gets the cookies: say PDF, say parts of SVG, say parts of VoiceXML but not SGML and therefore, not XML. As for the voices raised, again, a foolproof system can always be overcome by well-connected fools. And who shall judge? Individuals who choose the means to choose the means, then enable by abstraction, a common assent to a common language, and then leave to others that which is too tedious to do alone and too costly to own otherwise. "Of the people, by the people, for the people", lest governance be unable to govern itself. (paraphrasing James Madison). len -----Original Message----- From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@t...] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 3:11 PM To: xml-dev@l... Subject: RE: New W3C Patent Practice At 01:25 PM 25/01/02 -0600, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > The idea that the web has been >driven by open source or individuals is largely >an illusion of our own making much again like >those investment bankers working hard with >the press to make the public assume all the >risk for investments which were flakey from >the get-go while they made unreasonable profits. Really, Len. If you think the web would have happened without the CERN & NCSA httpd's, or perl, or Mosaic, or libgd, lynx, or the efforts of TimBL and Marca and the other backroom noncommercial guys, you're not looking at the same planet I am. It wouldn't have happened without open source and it wouldn't have happened if the implementors had had to pay for the right to implement. For this reasons, it won't happen for VoiceXML unless they get that spec unencumbered PDQ. I like the draft. It makes it pretty clear that if a W3C effort wants to start down a RAND road, there's no rule saying it can't, but that the risks of doing so are very high because it certain that many voices of them, some in influential positions, will be raised against it.
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