Re: W3C Patent Policy History summary

> Le 19 nov. 2013 à 12:57, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> a écrit :
> I wasn't there at the time, so maybe you are right that W3C reversed itself.

It's not the fact that it reversed itself that I'm trying to highlight. 
I don't think the reversal itself was a bad thing, in fact, quite the
contrary (to quote Paul Samuelson, "Well when events change, I change my
mind. What do you do?").

What I'm trying to highlight is that:

 - the W3C started down a path that would be disastrous for the Open Web 
 - this happened at the behest of a small subset of Web users - i.e.,
 the influence of certain members was out of all proportion to their
 number (the old 'crisis of representation' again)
 - when put to the public for consultation, there was a "firestorm of
 criticism"
 - the W3C took that on board, and reversed itself, for the good of the
 Open Web

This is the *exact same pattern* we see today, only it's DRM not
Patents.

You've done an about-face in the interests of the Open Web in the past. 
The Open Web now holds the whip hand, as compared to 2002, but people
here are speaking as though it'll "lose" if you about-face again.  That
wasn't correct in 2002, and it certainly isn't true in 2013.

-- 
Duncan Bayne
ph: +61 420817082 | web: http://duncan-bayne.github.com/ | skype:
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Received on Wednesday, 20 November 2013 04:22:15 UTC