W3C and Open Standards Re: What change could we make? (was Re: Letter on DRM in HTML)

Tim Berners-Lee:
> Nikos's statement "... EME [...] contradicts with Open Web principles"
> is rousing but doesn't say which principles those are nor
> how they are necessarily contradicted.

In the years before EME there was some kind of consensus of what "Open"
meant. Many organisations (but not all) therefore never bothered to
define terms like "Open", "Open Standard" or "Open Web Platform".

For many years it was assumed by many (most?) people that it implied
compatibility with Open Source licenses and development models.

But now there are some in the IT-industry who try to redefine the
semantic of "Open". Even vendors of proprietary software using
proprietary "standards" now claim to use "Open" technologies etc.

Fortunately a few organisations defined the term "Open Standard" several
years ago. Two weeks ago I posted links to and excerpts from the
definitions of "Open Standard" developed by the FSFE and the OSI:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-restrictedmedia/2013Jun/0107.html

BTW: My suggestion is that the W3C supports the "Open Standard"
definition published by the OSI.

> For example, if there is a corner of your machine it is hard to program,
>  which helps you keep track of what you have paid for and what you haven't,
> the private key it holds corresponds to a public key which any publisher can
> be given? Or something?

I suppose you mean something like Trusted Computing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing

Cheers,
Andreas

Received on Friday, 21 June 2013 19:57:20 UTC