It's too early to change our model

Free standards have served the web well during a growth spurt covering
many orders of magnitude.  This growth has been based on developers
voluntarily adhering to standards without worrying about legalisms.

Fee-based standards would fundamentally change the underlying mechanism
by which the web grows.

The web continues to grow so the current model is not broken.  There is
no need to fix it.

Should web growth slow down, it might be appropriate to re-examine the
foundation, but the ability to adhere to a standard without fee is
fundamental to the present web.

Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 11:10:10 UTC