Box cutters found in WWW

May their (WTC and related victims) souls rest in peace.

But essentially these proposed changes are the "Box cutters" that
some are going to use to Hijack the whole Web.
The fact that Microsoft took so long (starting Mid 1998; see
Halloween documents: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/) to come
with a strategy to monopolize the Internet proves that Big does not
necessarily mean smart (read "Intellectual Property").
They give the paper for the script, and want to control the whole
movie. That is the basic idea.
I am not getting into the merits of Software patents (they are
bad, of course). But Microsoft etc. can have their patents, only
W3C should decline them to contribute anything to the standard.

Here is the new and improved RAND:

RAND_2.1) MEMBERS ARE FREE TO CONTRIBUTE TO A STANDARD THEIR
          PATENTED TECHNOLOGIES, FRAMEWORKS, IDEAS AND RELEVANT
          MATERIAL ON NO COST WHATSOEVER TO WHOMSOEVER FOR WHAT-
          SOEVER PURPOSE BASIS,
RAND_2.2) W3C SHALL REQUIRE ROYALTIES (HANDSOME OF COURSE) FROM ANY
          MEMBER ABSTAINING FROM CONTRIBUTING TO A STANDARD ANY
          PATENTED MATERIAL IF AND WHEN THEY USE IN ANY WAY
          WHATSOEVER SUCH A STANDARD,
RAND_2.3) ALL W3C STANDARDS ARE RETROACTIVELY AVAILABLE ONLY UNDER
          GPL (GNU Public License) WITH ADDITIONAL RESTRICTION OF
          NO COST WHATSOEVER TO WHOMSOEVER FOR WHATSOEVER BASIS,
RAND_2.4) ALL MATERIAL SUBMITTED (WHETHER ACCEPTED OR NOT) TOWARDS
          A STANDARD BECOMES THE PROPERTY OF W3C, AND THE MEMBER
          SUBMITTING SUCH MATERIAL ASSIGNS COPYRIGHT(s), PATENT(s)
          AND ANY AND ALL CLAIMS TO W3C ON NO COST WHATSOEVER BASIS

This is Rational And Non Discriminatory.

The very reason these companies try to push some nitwit (and
some not so nitwit) technology and ideas to be standards is to
spread their idea of doing things, gain wider acceptance and
market share, and make more money. So why does every one has to
pay to these companies to enable them to make money?

Halloween documents have a vivid blue print of the evil plans.
This is just the beginning. If we don't stop this we can forget
about the "W" in W3C and any chance of being our own.

Thanks,
Prasad Kommoju
rpkommoju@yahoo.com

Received on Wednesday, 3 October 2001 16:15:27 UTC