Standards should help education

As most developers I utterly disagree with your proposal.

How does this proposal support the W3C mission statement:
	"to lead the Web to its full potential"

A patent is:
	"A grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an
invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set
period of time." Source: The American Heritage. Dictionary of the English
Language, Fourth Edition.

The W3C web site lists 7 areas:
	1. Universal Access.
	2. Semantic Web
	3. Trust
	4. Interoperability
	5. Evolvability
	6. Decentralization
	7. Cooler Multimedia

To the people deciding on this issue, how does this proposal support them?
Governments have already satisfied the need for a ROI by protecting a
monopoly in a country. A standard would just give the world wide
legitimacy in exchange for nothing.

I believe this proposal to be the result of pressure from some of the big
software/hardware companies. These companies invest money in R&D and get
patents. Patents are the right to monopolyze an idea and are given by a
goverment as an exchange for making the information public domain.
Normally, developers can decide to pay for the right to use the IP or
develop their own. Meanwhile, Standard organizations define how all the
pieces match together, like when an assembly of Illustrated people decide
about the sintaxis of a language (like it happens in Spanish). Accepting
that parts of that standard are monopolized would be
like accepting that some parts of the language are propietary!. 

But, the people behind this proposal argue that W3C, should make those
monopolies the standard of the Internet Infraestructure. 

I also happen to teach Internet Engineering at the University of Sydney.
Many students projects use standards for their projects. In my example
above using a standard is like using a grammar book. I wouldn't like my
students to pay royalty for learning to write properly. 

I hope that you realize and don't make a decision that backfires and end
stopping the way for the
	"Web to its full potential"

best regards

Rafael
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Dr. Rafael A. Calvo                           : Phone: +61 2 9351 8171
  Department of Electrical Engineering J03      : Fax:   +61 2 9351 3847
  The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia  : rafa@sedal.usyd.edu.au

Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2001 22:48:37 UTC