- From: Jeffrey Zeldman <jeffrey@zeldman.com>
- Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 10:14:43 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
RAND Section 2.2 says "it is especially important that the Recommendations covering lower-layer infrastructure be implementable on an RF basis." RF = "Royalty-free," which means that even if a company has patented a standard, it cannot charge money for it. So far, so good. "It is especially important" means, "We hope you will adhere to this principle, but we will not enforce it." Not good, but understandable, since W3C by its charter has no enforcement power over member companies. "Lower-layer infrastructure" *may* refer to most of the standards that have built the web. But there's no way of knowing. Is HTTP part of the lower-layer infrastucture? Is HTML? What about XML and CSS? For the community to buy into RAND, W3C needs to spell out exactly which technologies are and will remain Royalty-free. Otherwise, it's open season for corporate lawyers to exploit W3C's vagueness to their companies' financial advantage. Put another way, if RAND is intended to protect the interests of member companies while preventing bad corporate behavior, as currently written it is too vague and wishy-washy to achieve either goal. My other problem with RAND, and it's a subjective one, is that the timing stinks. The W3C seems not to have noticed that New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania were brutally attacked on 11 September by an enemy or enemies who chose not to take "credit" for their acts of war. W3C, pull your heads out of your labs. The entire world is on tenterhooks, praying for peace and security while preparing for global devastation. This is hardly the time to expect web users and developers to contribute intelligently to the discussion of vaguely-worded documents with potentially far-reaching consequences. By all standards of decency, W3C should have put RAND on the shelf. jeffrey z e l d m a n now in pulp for your pleasure: TAKING YOUR TALENT TO THE WEB http://www.zeldman.com/talent/ daily: http://www.zeldman.com/ weekly: http://www.alistapart.com/ as needed: http://www.webstandards.org/
Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 10:16:06 UTC