In strong opposition to RAND

  RAND: "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" proprietary standards are now 
acceptable, according to this proposed new W3C definition. Amazing that a 
standards board which has as it's mission statement "... to lead the World 
Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its 
evolution and ensure its interoperability."  could somehow twist "common 
protocols" into proprietary patented technologies. Yet, welcome to a world 
where market propaganda wins over rational thought, where corporations use 
influence and power-brokering to force global standards down everyone else's 
throat only to their benefit, where the W3C capitulates their main mission 
statement and twists obvious facts about burying this proposed standard in 
verbage like:

   "W3C acknowledges the frustration expressed by some developers at not being 
able to comment on an earlier draft of the policy. Due to the complexity of 
the issues, the process of developing a draft that the Patent Policy Working 
Group felt reflected even a rough consensus of its own views took longer than 
expected."

  Right. Am I just being too cynical, or do I detect bullshit in these words?

  My prediction: if you do this and large American corporations succeed at a  
market balkanization of the free Web, the third world will react by turning 
their backs on the now proprietary first world Internet. The large 
corporations will discover that the move is been to their disservice, both by 
diminishing their global potential market and by reducing the exchange of 
ideas and technology between the third and first worlds. They will find that 
the sum is greater than the parts works in reverse, and the little parts they 
are left controlling will become almost worthless without a whole to piece 
them all together. This new Web will have capitulated it's primary reason for 
existence and we will be left to re-implement another Web, which hopefully 
will be licensed under terms which exclude proprietary control this time. 
Welcome to the start of a GPL'd Web/2.

J. Maynard Gelinas

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 11:20:08 UTC