"RAND" policy

The comment period is ending if not over, so I'll keep this
short.  I can't urge the W3C strongly enough to reconsider its
position towards the potential standardization of proprietary
protocols.  If a company is able to foist a proprietary protocol
as a de facto standard on the net (as Microsoft has done, for
example, with Word documents as email attachments), that's one
thing, but it is not the W3C's job to assist companies in that
endeavor.  Quite the contrary, it seems to me that it's the W3C's
job to preserve the open, vibrant spirit which characterizes the
web (like the rest of the net) and which has gotten it where it
is today.

The IETF has traditionally disallowed closed, proprietary,
patent-encumbered, or otherwise restricted protocols in its
standardization process, and the W3C should, too.

				     Steve Summit
				     scs@eskimo.com

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2001 10:38:45 UTC