Slashdot Mirror

Jeff Heaton writes: "Looks like W3C is backing down on allowing companies to charge royalties for technologies that are incorporated into a W3C standard. In a controversial proposal made public last fall, the consortium debated whether to allow companies to charge royalty fees if their technologies are used in a standard." The new draft is online.

zscgeek writes "The W3C just released the first working draft of CCXML a new XML based language designed to allow people to write advanced phone control applications. The announcement is here and the specification is here. The cool thing about CCXML is that it provides advanced call control features that were missing from VoiceXML so it allows lots of new applications that just were not possible before with VoiceXML. It also integrates with VoiceXML so you can reuse all your VoiceXML code. Voxeo has also announced an open beta of an implementation of it that you can access at http://community.voxeo.com so you can try this stuff out."

zscgeek writes "The W3C just released the first working draft of CCXML a new XML based language designed to allow people to write advanced phone control applications. The announcement is here and the specification is here. The cool thing about CCXML is that it provides advanced call control features that were missing from VoiceXML so it allows lots of new applications that just were not possible before with VoiceXML. It also integrates with VoiceXML so you can reuse all your VoiceXML code. Voxeo has also announced an open beta of an implementation of it that you can access at http://community.voxeo.com so you can try this stuff out."

__past__ writes: "The W3C released a recommendation on XML Signature Syntax and Processing. The interesting point is not only that this is quite an important step for secure XML processing (esp. with regarding to web services), but also because there are some possibly ugly patent issues."

__past__ writes: "The W3C released a recommendation on XML Signature Syntax and Processing. The interesting point is not only that this is quite an important step for secure XML processing (esp. with regarding to web services), but also because there are some possibly ugly patent issues."

__past__ writes: "The W3C released a recommendation on XML Signature Syntax and Processing. The interesting point is not only that this is quite an important step for secure XML processing (esp. with regarding to web services), but also because there are some possibly ugly patent issues."

Dimitris Dimitriadis of Ontologicon , W3C Representative to the DOM Test Suite Group, writes with an announcement also signed by Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C DOM Activity lead, and Mary Brady of NIST: "The DOM Test Suite Group releases the first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite, Level 1 Core. The first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite for Level 1 Core has been released by the DOM Test Suite Group. The DOM TS aims at helping implementors test their implementations' conformance with the W3C DOM Level 1 specification. This work, launched by W3C and NIST, is a publically developed and open framework to test the DOM Level 1 Core implementations. Read about the Document Object Model (DOM) Conformance Test Suites at http://www.w3.org/DOM/Test, where you can also download the DOM TS distribution. Comments are appreciated and need to be sent to www-dom-ts@w3.org (online archive at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom-ts)."

Dimitris Dimitriadis of Ontologicon , W3C Representative to the DOM Test Suite Group, writes with an announcement also signed by Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C DOM Activity lead, and Mary Brady of NIST: "The DOM Test Suite Group releases the first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite, Level 1 Core. The first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite for Level 1 Core has been released by the DOM Test Suite Group. The DOM TS aims at helping implementors test their implementations' conformance with the W3C DOM Level 1 specification. This work, launched by W3C and NIST, is a publically developed and open framework to test the DOM Level 1 Core implementations. Read about the Document Object Model (DOM) Conformance Test Suites at http://www.w3.org/DOM/Test, where you can also download the DOM TS distribution. Comments are appreciated and need to be sent to www-dom-ts@w3.org (online archive at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom-ts)."

Dimitris Dimitriadis of Ontologicon , W3C Representative to the DOM Test Suite Group, writes with an announcement also signed by Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C DOM Activity lead, and Mary Brady of NIST: "The DOM Test Suite Group releases the first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite, Level 1 Core. The first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite for Level 1 Core has been released by the DOM Test Suite Group. The DOM TS aims at helping implementors test their implementations' conformance with the W3C DOM Level 1 specification. This work, launched by W3C and NIST, is a publically developed and open framework to test the DOM Level 1 Core implementations. Read about the Document Object Model (DOM) Conformance Test Suites at http://www.w3.org/DOM/Test, where you can also download the DOM TS distribution. Comments are appreciated and need to be sent to www-dom-ts@w3.org (online archive at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom-ts)."

DarkVein writes "My question is twofold. First, with the introduction of WebFonts from W3C, are there any projects underway to develop a real Web Font format, or are Type1 and Truetype thought to be sufficient? Secondly, I seem to be at a loss to find any decent and open font creation tools, especially ones capable of Unicode. The best I've found is GETO which seems to have been abandoned about a year and a half ago, without notice. I've had a long standing desire to get my feet wet designing one or two decent Unicode fonts, but most of the options seem to only be available for MacOS9, Win32 and require far higher prices."

Jesper Juhl writes: "Daniel Weitzner from W3C just posted an e-mail to the patent policy workgroup's mailing list, about the latest progress of the patent policy working group. For all those people who feel strongly about this issue I strongly recommend that you read the letter and (optionally) post your comments to the mailing list."

Jesper Juhl writes: "Daniel Weitzner from W3C just posted an e-mail to the patent policy workgroup's mailing list, about the latest progress of the patent policy working group. For all those people who feel strongly about this issue I strongly recommend that you read the letter and (optionally) post your comments to the mailing list."

jdaly writes "Given the interest Slashdot readers have shown in W3C's Patent Policy, I would like to provide an update and pointer to the most recent document published by W3C on Patent Issues. The W3C has published Current Patent Practice as a W3C Note. Reviewed by the W3C Advisory Board, the Note represents the current state of W3C patent practice as implemented by the Team for W3C Recommendations. "

From the document: This current practice has evolved in order to satisfy the goal held by a number of W3C Members and significant parts of the larger Web community: that W3C Recommendations should be, as far as possible, implementable on a Royalty-Free basis [AC]. The current practice described here seeks to

• establish Royalty-Free implementation as a goal for Recommendations produced by new and re-chartered Working Groups;
• encourage maximum disclosure of patents that might prevent a W3C Recommendation from being implemented on a Royalty-Free basis;
• provide a process for addressing situations in which the goal of Royalty-Free implementation may not be attainable.

It serves as a guide for W3C Activities between now and when the policy developed by the Patent Policy Working Group is finalized. The policy is currently a Working Draft. Comments are welcome on the _publicly_ archived mailing list www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org.

jdaly writes "Given the interest Slashdot readers have shown in W3C's Patent Policy, I would like to provide an update and pointer to the most recent document published by W3C on Patent Issues. The W3C has published Current Patent Practice as a W3C Note. Reviewed by the W3C Advisory Board, the Note represents the current state of W3C patent practice as implemented by the Team for W3C Recommendations. "

From the document: This current practice has evolved in order to satisfy the goal held by a number of W3C Members and significant parts of the larger Web community: that W3C Recommendations should be, as far as possible, implementable on a Royalty-Free basis [AC]. The current practice described here seeks to

• establish Royalty-Free implementation as a goal for Recommendations produced by new and re-chartered Working Groups;
• encourage maximum disclosure of patents that might prevent a W3C Recommendation from being implemented on a Royalty-Free basis;
• provide a process for addressing situations in which the goal of Royalty-Free implementation may not be attainable.

It serves as a guide for W3C Activities between now and when the policy developed by the Patent Policy Working Group is finalized. The policy is currently a Working Draft. Comments are welcome on the _publicly_ archived mailing list www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org.

jdaly writes " In an effort to build shared understanding of Web Architecture principles, W3C has chartered and assembled a Technical Architecture Group - the TAG for short. The TAG will document cross-technology Web architecture principles, and resolve architectural issues. The TAG will conduct its work on a public mailing list. Chair Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Cotton, Roy Fielding, David Orchard, Norman Walsh, and Stuart Williams join appointees Tim Bray, Dan Connolly, and Chris Lilley as the first TAG participants. Of note to Slashdot readers (perhaps): Neither Tim Bray nor Roy Fielding are connected with W3C Member organizations. Instead, they were chosen for their knowledge and achievements - as well as the importance they have in technical communities. Here is the general press release and the TAG homepage. "

jdaly writes " In an effort to build shared understanding of Web Architecture principles, W3C has chartered and assembled a Technical Architecture Group - the TAG for short. The TAG will document cross-technology Web architecture principles, and resolve architectural issues. The TAG will conduct its work on a public mailing list. Chair Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Cotton, Roy Fielding, David Orchard, Norman Walsh, and Stuart Williams join appointees Tim Bray, Dan Connolly, and Chris Lilley as the first TAG participants. Of note to Slashdot readers (perhaps): Neither Tim Bray nor Roy Fielding are connected with W3C Member organizations. Instead, they were chosen for their knowledge and achievements - as well as the importance they have in technical communities. Here is the general press release and the TAG homepage. "

jdaly writes " In an effort to build shared understanding of Web Architecture principles, W3C has chartered and assembled a Technical Architecture Group - the TAG for short. The TAG will document cross-technology Web architecture principles, and resolve architectural issues. The TAG will conduct its work on a public mailing list. Chair Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Cotton, Roy Fielding, David Orchard, Norman Walsh, and Stuart Williams join appointees Tim Bray, Dan Connolly, and Chris Lilley as the first TAG participants. Of note to Slashdot readers (perhaps): Neither Tim Bray nor Roy Fielding are connected with W3C Member organizations. Instead, they were chosen for their knowledge and achievements - as well as the importance they have in technical communities. Here is the general press release and the TAG homepage. "

Imagine "campaigning" for a job that doesn't exist, may never exist, and is sure to be full of heartburn for anyone who takes it on. Stephen Satchell is a self-declared candidate for the three-person committee the Feds might appoint to ensure Microsoft's future good behavior. Satch is certainly qualified; he's been online nearly forever, he's worked with computer operating systems darn near as long as computers have had operating systems, and he's certainly not afraid to speak his mind. But even the best-qualified job candidates need to be interviewed before they are chosen, and Satch has consented to have Slashdot readers conduct the initial interview in this hiring process. One question per interviewer, please. We'll email him 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers next week.

Daniel writes: "Apple has a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,379,129) on compositing a source and destination image using a mask image. This patent appears to read on alpha channel transparency, which the PNG and MNG file formats use. APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing. Since this patent appears to read on the PNG file format, Apple is hampering work on the PNG and MNG file formats. Perhaps Apple would like to clarify this situation by explicitly stating that this patent does not cover the PNG and MNG file formats or by RF Licensing their patent to the PNG and MNG development groups. Alternatively, the PNG and MNG developers are asking people to submit prior art in order to invalidate Apple's patent. SGI in particular appears to have prior art with their 'blendfunction.' Make sure the prior art you submit is older than May 08, 1992, the filing date of Apple's patent."

Russ Nelson writes: "In our monthly board meeting this past Wednesday, the Open Source Initiative approved three new licenses for use with OSI Certified Open Source Software: the W3C license, the Motosoto license, and the Open Group Test Suite License. In other action, one license was voted down because it violated the discrimination clause of the Open Source Definition. Another (the RTSP) was withdrawn because the license-discuss mailing list convinced the submittor that it wasn't ready. And one (the DSPL) goes back to license-discuss because we disagree with their analysis and want to re-negotiate it with them. Several people have suggested that we post the licenses that we have turned down, and explain just why they don't comply with the Open Source Definition. We don't want to discourage people from submitting licenses, knowing that their license might be held up for public notice. We'd rather encourage people with non-compliant licenses to fix them so they are compliant."

Daniel Weitzner is Chairperson of the World Wide Web Consortium's Patent Policy Working Group,the body that is deciding if it's okay to charge "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (RAND) license fees for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. We sent him the questions you asked back on October 8. Here, at long last, are his answers.

Why should standards be for sale?
by Fleet Admiral Ackbar
My question is - There have traditionally been two types of standards. The first type is an agreed standard, such as the RFCs. The 'market' has no say, but there is a presumed compensation in the availability and usability of said standard. The second type is a 'de facto', or 'market' standard. This standard is decided by people voting with their checkbooks.

So, "we" get what "we" want, but we have no guarantees of availability, usability, or definability.

Doesn't the idea of charging to use the standards combine the worst features of both? Doesn't doing so severely compromise the respectability of the process?

Weitzner:
Internet and Web standards (some might say specifications, but I won't quibble) have tended to be a mixed product of market-driven and agreement-driven selection. In both W3C and the IETF, specifications only advance when they show indications of being widely-deployed (there are exceptions) and generally agreed-to. Adding a fee for implementers would certainly have some impact on this process, but I'm not sure it's the one you point to.

You suggest that the potential to earn license fees on a particular standard would drive its adoption. It seems equally possible that standards for which one has to pay a fee would see low levels of deployment, which could prevent a spec from receving full standard status. The IETF, which has some experience with standards that have license fees associated with them, won't advance a spec too far on the standards track unless it's clear that license fees are reasonable 'enough' to allow broad implementation. After, a number of commenters on Slashdot and www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org have suggested that there would be no open source implementation of RAND standards at all. That would certainly have an impact on the level of deployment.

The Patent Policy WG draft proposed included two possible licensing modes:

(1) Royalty-Free: specs produced in this mode would have as a requirement that they be implementable royalty-free. If information about patents came to light that indicated the spec could not, in fact, be implemented RF, then the WG responsible would either have to take some action (design around, secure RF licenses, etc.) to make it RF, or switch status to a RAND group.

(2) RAND: RAND specs would have to be implementable on a RAND (which could include a zero royalty) basis.

The Patent Policy WG (PPWG) included RAND as an one of the two options for several reasons:

(a) There is evidence that in other technology arenas RAND standards work perfectly well. For example, CD players, TVs, phones, all come with significant patent royalty obligations for their producers, but these devices are nevertheless widely available at seemingly affordable prices.

(b) Disallowing technologies which may only be available for a fee (RAND terms) would deny the Web access to the best technology available.

(c) If W3C adopts an RF-only model, then many important Web technology standards may end up being developed at other standards bodies or industry consortia.

W3C is now in the process of assessing whether the RAND-RF balance we struck in the Last Call draft is the policy we should adopt. As chair of the PPWG, I can't predict the outcome, but can tell you that this issue is being seriously debated. When we put out another draft policy, the public will also have a chance to comment more (if that's possible :-) ) on this subject.

abuse of fees and rights?
by Alien54
How do you propose to police, if at all, the potential of abuse from the imposition of fees, so that the interests of all parties, especially simple users and developers are protected.

Examples of abuse that I would want to avoid include the Fiasco with the licensing fees for implementing .GIF files many years AFTER they became a standard, and the recent action by MS to enforce a two year upgrade cycle for use of their software in businesses, when many companies are much more comfortable with a three or four year upgrade cycle. (ZDNet has had several articles critical in the extreme of that action)

I would very much prefer the situation to be similar, say, to domain name registration, where many parties can provide that service.

Weitzner:
One approach to abusive or unfair licensing practices would be to rescind the Recommendation. It's clear that having a W3C Recommendation that would require patented technology increases the value of the patent to the patent holder substantially. So, if the patent holder is not willing to license its patent in some terms (RF or RAND depending on the policy we adopt) then we should consider rescinding the Recommendation as it cannot promote interoperability. W3C is discussing a mechanism to do this.

I don't understand the DNS analogy. Yes, there is competition being introduced into the domain name registration space, but patents are, by their nature a monopoly. Requring either RF or RAND licensing, which is what the proposed policy does, is a mechanism to require that particular patents held by particular entities are available on at least some 'reasonable' terms. (See the answer to question #5 and #10, too.)

standards vs patents
by jeffy124
It's always been my opinion that standards are something developed for the general free use of the public. Standards are often decided upon by organizations such as NIST, IEEE, academia, etc.

Patents on the other hand aren't standards in my opinion. Commercial companies have traditionally been the ones pushing for patents and when they obtain one, they charge users of it a license fee.

A lot of patents are very useful and deserve to be standards, but I feel they should have the fees removed before it can be called a 'standard.' The patent can still stand after something has been standardized, but I dont think people should be charged to use it.

What's your call on opinions like mine that are carried by many individuals here at slashdot?

Weitzner:
To me, the fundamental question is: what approach to patents and standards will best serve the goals of building, maintaining and expanding the Web as a universal information space? That Web standards have been implemented royalty-free until how. I believe it's clear that the Web would not have the reach or the accessibility it does if we had to rely on the more traditional, patent-driven standards to work, but it's ultimately hard to predict what would happen if the world were different.

Some have asked, 'if it ain't broke why fix it?' But the relationship between patents and Web standards is increasingly broken. At W3C we've had several specs with threats of license fee demands. And, there are an increasing number of patents surfacing where the licensing intentions are not clear. So we have to take steps to provide a licensing environment that meets our goals rather than just relying on a series of historical accidents and well-placed good will that has worked in the early days of the Web. This means that we can't do nothing, we can't refuse to acknowledge the existence of software patents. We have to find ways to make sure that where there are patents that essential to implement a given Recommendation, that they are known and available on terms that make widespread, diverse implementations possible.

A bit naive?
by sphealey
In it's Response to Public Comments [on RAND], W3C states W3C takes no position on the public policy questions surrounding software patents. Isn't that statement at best naive? The Internet and Web were originally designed with the idea of free and open communication. Today, there are powerful forces that would like to see open communication closed down and the Web turned over entirely to commercial pursuits. If a RAND policy is adopted for Web standards, won't the next move by those commercial entites be to create as many propriatry standards as possible and force them on the entire Web community (using hammers such as DMCA), like it or not?

Weitzner:
Here are the considerations that went into the scope of the W3C Patent Policy and why we don't take up the software patent policy debate:

First, we are a technical standards organization, not lobbyists or, for the most part, lawyers. We think that we are pretty good at developing standards, but don't view it as our mission to lobby to have laws changed. Therefore, we need a patent policy that deals with the present-day reality of software patents, which exist in a variety of forms in a variety of countries (not just the US) around the world.

Second, we are an international organization, so even if we succeeded at changing US patent law, or the law in another country, as long as any country has software patents we have to deal with them.

Your question seems to suggest that we are being 'naively' dragged along in a larger campaign to make the Web into a more closed, proprietary environment. I think that you are right to point out that the Net is subject to a greater range of regulation than it was five or ten years ago, but you're mistaken to suggest that the patent policy we proposed is in support of that trend. To the contrary, as I've said in question (3), even the policy as proposed in August would go a long way to make it more certain that core infrastructure standards can be implemented on a royalty-free basis. I agree that any Web standards that are legally required for all Web software (or even just key tools such as servers or browsers) should be implementable on an RF basis.

[See my answer to #12, too.]

Who will define 'reasonable'?
by drew_kime
What's reasonable for me, or for any other small, independant developer, is probably not what's reasonable for, say, Adobe, Microsoft or Macromedia. So will they be allowed to pay "unreasonabley" low liscensing fees, or will I be asked to pay "unreasonably" high fees? It seems that "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder.

Weitzner:
Reasonable is measured in light of prevailing license rates paid in the market. Question number 10 does a nice job of illustrating how this might work.

Why follow other standards bodies? by sphealey
In its Response to Public Comments, W3C made the following statment:

4. Is RAND licensing common for bodies like W3C? Yes. A RAND license is common among standards organizations.

One of the strongest criticisms of organizations such as ISO and ITU is that they charge exhorbitant fees to even read, much less implement, their standards. Some government entities have even gone so far as to incorporate proprietary standards into laws, such that individuals have to right to read the laws that they can be jailed for violating (e.g. Veeck vs. City of Austin).

The Web and Internet have always been unique in having their standards freely available for review and implementation. Is it a good thing for W3C to seek to emulate the "closed source" standards bodies?

Weitzner:
You're not exactly correct about all Internet standards (See my point about the role of RAND licensing in the IETF in #12) but I do think it's important to preserve the openness of W3C and IETF. Even the proposed policy, which would allow RF or RAND standards to be developed at W3C, is far more supportive of the RF tradition than ANY other standards body. The proposed policy provides a way for W3C to decide to do an standard on an RF basis and to hold ourselves to that goal, forcing the spec off the Recommendation track if non-RF patents are discovered and there is no way to avoid paying a fee.

Fork in Standards?
by ProfDumb
If the RAND patent proposal is adopted by the W3C, there has been much discussion in the open source/free software community about forking the standards process, to preserve patent-free web standards. This fork would create a new standards body as a competitor to the W3C.

1.Do you think such a fork is likely if the proposal passes?
2.If a fork does happen, what are the consequences for the web?
3.Should the W3C take the likelihood of a fork into account when considering this proposal?

Weitzner:
Serially:

1. If the proposed policy passes we would do some standards as Royalty-Free standards and some as RAND. I can certain imagine the free software folk would seek to develop alternate standards in those areas where we had RAND standards.

2. A complete fork, that is a competing set of standards for all W3C Recommendations whether RAND or RF, would be very destructive. I'm also not sure that it would be successful in the RF case, because there wouldn't be a practical reason to do it, for most open source projects, except on a boycott basis.

3. Under the proposed policy, I would say that we would have to take the possibility of a fork on particular Recommendation into account before we decided to go RAND.

Finally, you can have as many standards organizations as you like and there will still be patents out there. Forking Web standards development doesn't answer the question of what to do, given that patents are out there. W3C has been burned by this. The only responsible course we feel we can take is to create clarity through an explicit policy.

Can you define "non-discriminatory"?
by BeBoxer
Can you please define exactly what it means for licensing terms to be "non-discriminatory", since the definition has a huge bearing on open source software?

For example which, if any, of the following examples would be non-descriminatory?

A) Fixed per-unit licensing costs. Let's say, for example, $1.00 per unit shipped. While this would be non-descriminatory in some senses, it would also prohibit free software and hence be descriminatory in other ways.

B) Licensing fees only for non-free software. While this method would not descriminate against open source, it could be seen as "descriminating" against closed-source software since they would be the only ones paying licensing fees.

C) Percent-of-price fees. For example, 5% of the price of shipped units. This would seem to be fair since the same licensing terms would apply to everyone, but in practice it would be similar to B) and hence seen as descriminatory.

D) Free for everyone to use. This would seem to be the only license which cannot be viewed as descriminating against someone. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that this is not what is intended when the W3C uses the term "RAND".

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated, I'm sure

Weitzner:
The general understanding of non-discrimination in US law is that 'similarly situated parties are treated similarly.' Consider an example from a different legal realm, shipping. Most common carriers (like railroads and truckers) were historically required to charge non-discriminatory shipping rates. So, if you charge Customer A $1000 to ship 2 tons of freight 500 miles, then you must charge Customer B who comes along $1000, too.

If Customer B's load is actually harder to ship for some reason (it takes up more space in your truck, or requires special handling) then you can charge B more without being accused of discriminating. But if you charge B more than A simply because you like A better, or because B might be competing against you in some other business, then that's discriminatory.

The Patent Policy Working Group has on its agenda to consider the precise interaction between both the RF and RAND license models in the draft Patent Policy on the various flavors of Open Source licenses. So, I don't have an answer to that question yet, but it will be answered by the time we propose another draft policy. (I'll take your examples to the PPWG, too.)

RAND
by someone247356
The W3C must realize that ANY fee no, matter how reasonable they may seem, would have the effect of not allowing free and open source developers to participate.

I am sure that you are aware of the fact that the internet as we all know and love/hate it was developed by free and open source software.

Certain commercial developers, have been trying to convert the internet from, "...the greatest democratizing medium..." (ACLU vs. Reno) into yet another commercial morass where they can reap the maximum profit from the unsuspecting populous.

Given that, why would the W3C even concieve of a proposition that favors corporate purse strings over the greater good of the common man, and the internet itself?

We have seen governments try to regulate what we can say (CDA, CDA II, COPA), corporations what we can do (DMCA, SSSCA, DRM) and even ICANN with the warped sense of justice embodied in its UDRP. Does the common internet user now have to be leery of standards bodies like the W3C, which appears to favor corporate interests?

Weitzner:
You're inviting an answer here of the form 'trust us'. That's really not for me to say, though, it's for the community at-large to decide through individual actions. Will independent developers continue to implement our standards, comment on our draft specs, etc?

These questions are going to be answered over time, based on the way our final patent policy looks and how it actually works. I do hope that the independent developer community has reason to continue to work with us, if not trust us. I hope that in the wake of the 2500+ comments we've received that people have recognized that we have responded in a way that seeks more input (by extending the comment period), involved recognized open source leaders (Bruce Perens and Eben Moglen were added to the group charged with developing the policy, and more may be added, too).

Most important, the W3C Process requires that we put out regular public drafts for review and that there will be another Last Call draft before we finalize a policy.

Your reference to Reno v. ACLU does touch a nerve for me, though. I was one of the lawyers who organized the First Amendment challenge to the CDA, resulting in the US Supreme Court overturning the law and enshrining wonderful quotes such as the one about democracy that you cited, into US law.

I'm reminded of 1991 when the US Congress allowed the Internet (at the time the NSFNet) to be opened to commercial traffic. Many advocates of the status quo (research, education, and mostly-benign Usenet chatter) predicted terrible results from allowing commercial content and commercial providers on to the Net. They, those academics and government folk who had the run of the Net in the 80s, felt that the Net should remain a public, non-commercial resource, run by the (US) government.

The switch to commercial use did happen and it's clear that we are all the better for it. Without that, most of us would not be online and there would be no Web, no Freenet, no Napster, and only closed, proprietary email systems like the old Prodigy. The point of this historical digression is NOT that we should accept RAND standards as part of the inevitable commercialization of the Web. Rather, we should recognize that the Net that we know and love will change and can survive change if we handle it wisely.

Define "reasonable."
by overshoot
I chair a JEDEC committee. JEDEC's legal office reserves the right to define "reasonable" in our RAND clause.

Since all of our standards apply to hardware with well-understood costs of manufacture, the royalty structure most often adopted is "fixed percent of OEM price." This is a necessity in a market where semiconductor prices drop with Moore's Law, and a trivial royalty one day dominates the price the next.

In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.

The alternatives, as we've already seen, can be as extreme as one-time charges in the millions of dollars. For Microsoft, able to amortize a flat-fee across hundreds of millions of units, the royalty would indeed be "reasonable." For Joe Startup, it would be prohibitive.

So, my question: what prospects do we have that RAND will be clarified, preferably with guidelines such as "percent of ASP," but at least with exclusion of abominations such as flat-fee?

Weitzner:
So far we've decided that we do not have a good mechanism within W3C for assessing or defining reasonableness. Generally that's done in private negotiations or sorted out by a court. We've come to that conclusion because there do not seem to be well-established models for Web software royalties, as there are in your hardware examples. If we adopt a policy that includes a RAND component, and if we discover that the lack of definition is a problem, I am sure that we would reconsider.

What about patents that only exist in the US
by mocm
If the w3c want to use patented technology in standards, what are they going to do about patents that only exist in the promiscuous US patent system and would never be granted in other countries. Or even the other way around. Won't that turn the world wide web into a us only web or at least split it into lots of separate entities?

Weitzner:
The problem you bring up will be one for the patent holder (not W3C, which does not hold, nor plans to hold any patents). Patents can generally only be enforced over implementations sold or distributed in the country where the patent is issued. So, if a company has a US patent that is essential to a W3C Recommendation, then it could only seek royalties for products/services distributed in the US.

International and Third World ramifications
by dpilot
Many parts of the Third World are attempting to join the information age. Typically they are strapped for resources, and so far the ability to get on the internet with minimum barriers to entry has been key for them. The availability of free software has been essential. Not just free for use, but free for them to enter the development process, both to meet local needs and to build their technical base.

Doesn't patent encumbrance of W3C standards constitute another barrier to entry for poorer nations?

Even if we are willing to give them all copies of some proprietary web browser, aren't we still standing in the way of their developing their own technical expertise, because they won't have access to and use of the source code.

Doesn't it come across just a little like (Pardon the inflammatory language, but it exaggerates the argument appropriately.) fat Western capitalist pigs trying to keep the Third World down?

Weitzner:
W3C has worked very hard to be sure that our Recommendations meet internationalization requirements to that the World Wide Web lives up to its name. And, we put a lot of energy into reaching out to countries whose technology sectors are in early stages of development. So while I don't necessarily accept that nefarious intentions in the flaming part of your question, I do think that we have to pay special attention to the result that you predict.

We need open standards
by ansible
People from the W3C have "acknowledged" that the Internet's growth has been due to open standards.

This isn't not even half the story. The Internet would not exist without open standards promoted by bodies like the IETF and W3C (until now).

In the 1980's and early 1990's there were a number of network protocols in use: DECNet, VINES, NETBIOS/NETBEUI (shudder), IPX/SPX, SNA, and more. None of them initially would have been as scalable as TCP/IP. However, if any of them had been truly open, it might have been possible to fix them.

But none of those other protocols were open... and where are they now? Nowhere.

It's the same situation for hypertext protocols. People and companies have proposed substantial improvments onto existing protocols. A notable example of this is Hyper-G, which was then commercialized by Hyperwave.com. It fixes a lot of problems with navigation, and stuff like broken links. However, there was never a free and open implementation, and so it has languished in obscurity for the last 5 years.

My question to the W3C is this: Do they have any evidence that proprietary protocols will foster continued growth of the Internet and the applications that run on top of it?

Weitzner:
Here are two answers:

[snide] What evidence? The IETF, since at least October 1996 when RFC 2026 went into effect, explicitly allowed standards track specs to have RAND encumbrances. The question really is: has the IETF has been irrelevant, useless, and closed since 1996? I don't think that it has, but you may have another view. [/snide]

[more_serious] There's no question that core protocols and document formats have a far greater chance of being widely deployed and well-designed if they can be widely implemented, without payment of royalties. The question is whether that means that every spec W3C does has to be RF? [/more_serious]

Make up of the RAND committee?
by fperez
I would like to ask why this committee is so heavily biased towards the legal side in its makeup. Of course there should be lawyers there, since it deals with legal issues. But these issues have a tremendous impact on technology --in particular on its free exchange. Yet the members come from the IP departments of huge corporations, with little visible representation of technical people from the free software world.

The W3C is setting up a standard which will potentially harm many free software projects, yet is not giving that side any true voice in the drafting committee. I find it hard to believe that this was not a deliberate decision driven by corporate interests.

This attitude is sad, short sighted, and at the very least ungrateful. It avoids acknowledging the extent to which the free software world has contributed to the very existence and success of the internet as we know it.

Weitzner:
In early October we announced that we have invited Bruce Perens (OSI co-founder) and Eben Moglen (FSF General Counsel) to join the Patent Policy Working Group as 'invited experts' with full participation privileges. They've already begun working with the group and I'm really pleased with what they've been able to add so far.

We should have done this earlier. We will, in the process going forward be sure to learn from this lesson and the process going forward will be more open. What's important though is that the final policy will certainly reflect their participation.

Documents for reference:

• W3C Patent Policy Framework Working Draft - 16 August 2001
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/
• Backgrounder for W3C Patent Policy Framework - 20 August 2001
  http://www.w3.org/2001/08/patentnews
• Response to Public Comments on the W3C PPF WD
  http://www.w3.org/2001/10/patent-response
• Patent Policy Working Group Face-to-Face Meeting Summary
  http://www.w3.org/2001/10/ppwg-cupertino-ftf-summary.html

Daniel Weitzner is Chairperson of the World Wide Web Consortium's Patent Policy Working Group,the body that is deciding if it's okay to charge "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (RAND) license fees for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. We sent him the questions you asked back on October 8. Here, at long last, are his answers.

Why should standards be for sale?
by Fleet Admiral Ackbar
My question is - There have traditionally been two types of standards. The first type is an agreed standard, such as the RFCs. The 'market' has no say, but there is a presumed compensation in the availability and usability of said standard. The second type is a 'de facto', or 'market' standard. This standard is decided by people voting with their checkbooks.

So, "we" get what "we" want, but we have no guarantees of availability, usability, or definability.

Doesn't the idea of charging to use the standards combine the worst features of both? Doesn't doing so severely compromise the respectability of the process?

Weitzner:
Internet and Web standards (some might say specifications, but I won't quibble) have tended to be a mixed product of market-driven and agreement-driven selection. In both W3C and the IETF, specifications only advance when they show indications of being widely-deployed (there are exceptions) and generally agreed-to. Adding a fee for implementers would certainly have some impact on this process, but I'm not sure it's the one you point to.

You suggest that the potential to earn license fees on a particular standard would drive its adoption. It seems equally possible that standards for which one has to pay a fee would see low levels of deployment, which could prevent a spec from receving full standard status. The IETF, which has some experience with standards that have license fees associated with them, won't advance a spec too far on the standards track unless it's clear that license fees are reasonable 'enough' to allow broad implementation. After, a number of commenters on Slashdot and www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org have suggested that there would be no open source implementation of RAND standards at all. That would certainly have an impact on the level of deployment.

The Patent Policy WG draft proposed included two possible licensing modes:

(1) Royalty-Free: specs produced in this mode would have as a requirement that they be implementable royalty-free. If information about patents came to light that indicated the spec could not, in fact, be implemented RF, then the WG responsible would either have to take some action (design around, secure RF licenses, etc.) to make it RF, or switch status to a RAND group.

(2) RAND: RAND specs would have to be implementable on a RAND (which could include a zero royalty) basis.

The Patent Policy WG (PPWG) included RAND as an one of the two options for several reasons:

(a) There is evidence that in other technology arenas RAND standards work perfectly well. For example, CD players, TVs, phones, all come with significant patent royalty obligations for their producers, but these devices are nevertheless widely available at seemingly affordable prices.

(b) Disallowing technologies which may only be available for a fee (RAND terms) would deny the Web access to the best technology available.

(c) If W3C adopts an RF-only model, then many important Web technology standards may end up being developed at other standards bodies or industry consortia.

W3C is now in the process of assessing whether the RAND-RF balance we struck in the Last Call draft is the policy we should adopt. As chair of the PPWG, I can't predict the outcome, but can tell you that this issue is being seriously debated. When we put out another draft policy, the public will also have a chance to comment more (if that's possible :-) ) on this subject.

abuse of fees and rights?
by Alien54
How do you propose to police, if at all, the potential of abuse from the imposition of fees, so that the interests of all parties, especially simple users and developers are protected.

Examples of abuse that I would want to avoid include the Fiasco with the licensing fees for implementing .GIF files many years AFTER they became a standard, and the recent action by MS to enforce a two year upgrade cycle for use of their software in businesses, when many companies are much more comfortable with a three or four year upgrade cycle. (ZDNet has had several articles critical in the extreme of that action)

I would very much prefer the situation to be similar, say, to domain name registration, where many parties can provide that service.

Weitzner:
One approach to abusive or unfair licensing practices would be to rescind the Recommendation. It's clear that having a W3C Recommendation that would require patented technology increases the value of the patent to the patent holder substantially. So, if the patent holder is not willing to license its patent in some terms (RF or RAND depending on the policy we adopt) then we should consider rescinding the Recommendation as it cannot promote interoperability. W3C is discussing a mechanism to do this.

I don't understand the DNS analogy. Yes, there is competition being introduced into the domain name registration space, but patents are, by their nature a monopoly. Requring either RF or RAND licensing, which is what the proposed policy does, is a mechanism to require that particular patents held by particular entities are available on at least some 'reasonable' terms. (See the answer to question #5 and #10, too.)

standards vs patents
by jeffy124
It's always been my opinion that standards are something developed for the general free use of the public. Standards are often decided upon by organizations such as NIST, IEEE, academia, etc.

Patents on the other hand aren't standards in my opinion. Commercial companies have traditionally been the ones pushing for patents and when they obtain one, they charge users of it a license fee.

A lot of patents are very useful and deserve to be standards, but I feel they should have the fees removed before it can be called a 'standard.' The patent can still stand after something has been standardized, but I dont think people should be charged to use it.

What's your call on opinions like mine that are carried by many individuals here at slashdot?

Weitzner:
To me, the fundamental question is: what approach to patents and standards will best serve the goals of building, maintaining and expanding the Web as a universal information space? That Web standards have been implemented royalty-free until how. I believe it's clear that the Web would not have the reach or the accessibility it does if we had to rely on the more traditional, patent-driven standards to work, but it's ultimately hard to predict what would happen if the world were different.

Some have asked, 'if it ain't broke why fix it?' But the relationship between patents and Web standards is increasingly broken. At W3C we've had several specs with threats of license fee demands. And, there are an increasing number of patents surfacing where the licensing intentions are not clear. So we have to take steps to provide a licensing environment that meets our goals rather than just relying on a series of historical accidents and well-placed good will that has worked in the early days of the Web. This means that we can't do nothing, we can't refuse to acknowledge the existence of software patents. We have to find ways to make sure that where there are patents that essential to implement a given Recommendation, that they are known and available on terms that make widespread, diverse implementations possible.

A bit naive?
by sphealey
In it's Response to Public Comments [on RAND], W3C states W3C takes no position on the public policy questions surrounding software patents. Isn't that statement at best naive? The Internet and Web were originally designed with the idea of free and open communication. Today, there are powerful forces that would like to see open communication closed down and the Web turned over entirely to commercial pursuits. If a RAND policy is adopted for Web standards, won't the next move by those commercial entites be to create as many propriatry standards as possible and force them on the entire Web community (using hammers such as DMCA), like it or not?

Weitzner:
Here are the considerations that went into the scope of the W3C Patent Policy and why we don't take up the software patent policy debate:

First, we are a technical standards organization, not lobbyists or, for the most part, lawyers. We think that we are pretty good at developing standards, but don't view it as our mission to lobby to have laws changed. Therefore, we need a patent policy that deals with the present-day reality of software patents, which exist in a variety of forms in a variety of countries (not just the US) around the world.

Second, we are an international organization, so even if we succeeded at changing US patent law, or the law in another country, as long as any country has software patents we have to deal with them.

Your question seems to suggest that we are being 'naively' dragged along in a larger campaign to make the Web into a more closed, proprietary environment. I think that you are right to point out that the Net is subject to a greater range of regulation than it was five or ten years ago, but you're mistaken to suggest that the patent policy we proposed is in support of that trend. To the contrary, as I've said in question (3), even the policy as proposed in August would go a long way to make it more certain that core infrastructure standards can be implemented on a royalty-free basis. I agree that any Web standards that are legally required for all Web software (or even just key tools such as servers or browsers) should be implementable on an RF basis.

[See my answer to #12, too.]

Who will define 'reasonable'?
by drew_kime
What's reasonable for me, or for any other small, independant developer, is probably not what's reasonable for, say, Adobe, Microsoft or Macromedia. So will they be allowed to pay "unreasonabley" low liscensing fees, or will I be asked to pay "unreasonably" high fees? It seems that "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder.

Weitzner:
Reasonable is measured in light of prevailing license rates paid in the market. Question number 10 does a nice job of illustrating how this might work.

Why follow other standards bodies? by sphealey
In its Response to Public Comments, W3C made the following statment:

4. Is RAND licensing common for bodies like W3C? Yes. A RAND license is common among standards organizations.

One of the strongest criticisms of organizations such as ISO and ITU is that they charge exhorbitant fees to even read, much less implement, their standards. Some government entities have even gone so far as to incorporate proprietary standards into laws, such that individuals have to right to read the laws that they can be jailed for violating (e.g. Veeck vs. City of Austin).

The Web and Internet have always been unique in having their standards freely available for review and implementation. Is it a good thing for W3C to seek to emulate the "closed source" standards bodies?

Weitzner:
You're not exactly correct about all Internet standards (See my point about the role of RAND licensing in the IETF in #12) but I do think it's important to preserve the openness of W3C and IETF. Even the proposed policy, which would allow RF or RAND standards to be developed at W3C, is far more supportive of the RF tradition than ANY other standards body. The proposed policy provides a way for W3C to decide to do an standard on an RF basis and to hold ourselves to that goal, forcing the spec off the Recommendation track if non-RF patents are discovered and there is no way to avoid paying a fee.

Fork in Standards?
by ProfDumb
If the RAND patent proposal is adopted by the W3C, there has been much discussion in the open source/free software community about forking the standards process, to preserve patent-free web standards. This fork would create a new standards body as a competitor to the W3C.

1.Do you think such a fork is likely if the proposal passes?
2.If a fork does happen, what are the consequences for the web?
3.Should the W3C take the likelihood of a fork into account when considering this proposal?

Weitzner:
Serially:

1. If the proposed policy passes we would do some standards as Royalty-Free standards and some as RAND. I can certain imagine the free software folk would seek to develop alternate standards in those areas where we had RAND standards.

2. A complete fork, that is a competing set of standards for all W3C Recommendations whether RAND or RF, would be very destructive. I'm also not sure that it would be successful in the RF case, because there wouldn't be a practical reason to do it, for most open source projects, except on a boycott basis.

3. Under the proposed policy, I would say that we would have to take the possibility of a fork on particular Recommendation into account before we decided to go RAND.

Finally, you can have as many standards organizations as you like and there will still be patents out there. Forking Web standards development doesn't answer the question of what to do, given that patents are out there. W3C has been burned by this. The only responsible course we feel we can take is to create clarity through an explicit policy.

Can you define "non-discriminatory"?
by BeBoxer
Can you please define exactly what it means for licensing terms to be "non-discriminatory", since the definition has a huge bearing on open source software?

For example which, if any, of the following examples would be non-descriminatory?

A) Fixed per-unit licensing costs. Let's say, for example, $1.00 per unit shipped. While this would be non-descriminatory in some senses, it would also prohibit free software and hence be descriminatory in other ways.

B) Licensing fees only for non-free software. While this method would not descriminate against open source, it could be seen as "descriminating" against closed-source software since they would be the only ones paying licensing fees.

C) Percent-of-price fees. For example, 5% of the price of shipped units. This would seem to be fair since the same licensing terms would apply to everyone, but in practice it would be similar to B) and hence seen as descriminatory.

D) Free for everyone to use. This would seem to be the only license which cannot be viewed as descriminating against someone. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that this is not what is intended when the W3C uses the term "RAND".

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated, I'm sure

Weitzner:
The general understanding of non-discrimination in US law is that 'similarly situated parties are treated similarly.' Consider an example from a different legal realm, shipping. Most common carriers (like railroads and truckers) were historically required to charge non-discriminatory shipping rates. So, if you charge Customer A $1000 to ship 2 tons of freight 500 miles, then you must charge Customer B who comes along $1000, too.

If Customer B's load is actually harder to ship for some reason (it takes up more space in your truck, or requires special handling) then you can charge B more without being accused of discriminating. But if you charge B more than A simply because you like A better, or because B might be competing against you in some other business, then that's discriminatory.

The Patent Policy Working Group has on its agenda to consider the precise interaction between both the RF and RAND license models in the draft Patent Policy on the various flavors of Open Source licenses. So, I don't have an answer to that question yet, but it will be answered by the time we propose another draft policy. (I'll take your examples to the PPWG, too.)

RAND
by someone247356
The W3C must realize that ANY fee no, matter how reasonable they may seem, would have the effect of not allowing free and open source developers to participate.

I am sure that you are aware of the fact that the internet as we all know and love/hate it was developed by free and open source software.

Certain commercial developers, have been trying to convert the internet from, "...the greatest democratizing medium..." (ACLU vs. Reno) into yet another commercial morass where they can reap the maximum profit from the unsuspecting populous.

Given that, why would the W3C even concieve of a proposition that favors corporate purse strings over the greater good of the common man, and the internet itself?

We have seen governments try to regulate what we can say (CDA, CDA II, COPA), corporations what we can do (DMCA, SSSCA, DRM) and even ICANN with the warped sense of justice embodied in its UDRP. Does the common internet user now have to be leery of standards bodies like the W3C, which appears to favor corporate interests?

Weitzner:
You're inviting an answer here of the form 'trust us'. That's really not for me to say, though, it's for the community at-large to decide through individual actions. Will independent developers continue to implement our standards, comment on our draft specs, etc?

These questions are going to be answered over time, based on the way our final patent policy looks and how it actually works. I do hope that the independent developer community has reason to continue to work with us, if not trust us. I hope that in the wake of the 2500+ comments we've received that people have recognized that we have responded in a way that seeks more input (by extending the comment period), involved recognized open source leaders (Bruce Perens and Eben Moglen were added to the group charged with developing the policy, and more may be added, too).

Most important, the W3C Process requires that we put out regular public drafts for review and that there will be another Last Call draft before we finalize a policy.

Your reference to Reno v. ACLU does touch a nerve for me, though. I was one of the lawyers who organized the First Amendment challenge to the CDA, resulting in the US Supreme Court overturning the law and enshrining wonderful quotes such as the one about democracy that you cited, into US law.

I'm reminded of 1991 when the US Congress allowed the Internet (at the time the NSFNet) to be opened to commercial traffic. Many advocates of the status quo (research, education, and mostly-benign Usenet chatter) predicted terrible results from allowing commercial content and commercial providers on to the Net. They, those academics and government folk who had the run of the Net in the 80s, felt that the Net should remain a public, non-commercial resource, run by the (US) government.

The switch to commercial use did happen and it's clear that we are all the better for it. Without that, most of us would not be online and there would be no Web, no Freenet, no Napster, and only closed, proprietary email systems like the old Prodigy. The point of this historical digression is NOT that we should accept RAND standards as part of the inevitable commercialization of the Web. Rather, we should recognize that the Net that we know and love will change and can survive change if we handle it wisely.

Define "reasonable."
by overshoot
I chair a JEDEC committee. JEDEC's legal office reserves the right to define "reasonable" in our RAND clause.

Since all of our standards apply to hardware with well-understood costs of manufacture, the royalty structure most often adopted is "fixed percent of OEM price." This is a necessity in a market where semiconductor prices drop with Moore's Law, and a trivial royalty one day dominates the price the next.

In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.

The alternatives, as we've already seen, can be as extreme as one-time charges in the millions of dollars. For Microsoft, able to amortize a flat-fee across hundreds of millions of units, the royalty would indeed be "reasonable." For Joe Startup, it would be prohibitive.

So, my question: what prospects do we have that RAND will be clarified, preferably with guidelines such as "percent of ASP," but at least with exclusion of abominations such as flat-fee?

Weitzner:
So far we've decided that we do not have a good mechanism within W3C for assessing or defining reasonableness. Generally that's done in private negotiations or sorted out by a court. We've come to that conclusion because there do not seem to be well-established models for Web software royalties, as there are in your hardware examples. If we adopt a policy that includes a RAND component, and if we discover that the lack of definition is a problem, I am sure that we would reconsider.

What about patents that only exist in the US
by mocm
If the w3c want to use patented technology in standards, what are they going to do about patents that only exist in the promiscuous US patent system and would never be granted in other countries. Or even the other way around. Won't that turn the world wide web into a us only web or at least split it into lots of separate entities?

Weitzner:
The problem you bring up will be one for the patent holder (not W3C, which does not hold, nor plans to hold any patents). Patents can generally only be enforced over implementations sold or distributed in the country where the patent is issued. So, if a company has a US patent that is essential to a W3C Recommendation, then it could only seek royalties for products/services distributed in the US.

International and Third World ramifications
by dpilot
Many parts of the Third World are attempting to join the information age. Typically they are strapped for resources, and so far the ability to get on the internet with minimum barriers to entry has been key for them. The availability of free software has been essential. Not just free for use, but free for them to enter the development process, both to meet local needs and to build their technical base.

Doesn't patent encumbrance of W3C standards constitute another barrier to entry for poorer nations?

Even if we are willing to give them all copies of some proprietary web browser, aren't we still standing in the way of their developing their own technical expertise, because they won't have access to and use of the source code.

Doesn't it come across just a little like (Pardon the inflammatory language, but it exaggerates the argument appropriately.) fat Western capitalist pigs trying to keep the Third World down?

Weitzner:
W3C has worked very hard to be sure that our Recommendations meet internationalization requirements to that the World Wide Web lives up to its name. And, we put a lot of energy into reaching out to countries whose technology sectors are in early stages of development. So while I don't necessarily accept that nefarious intentions in the flaming part of your question, I do think that we have to pay special attention to the result that you predict.

We need open standards
by ansible
People from the W3C have "acknowledged" that the Internet's growth has been due to open standards.

This isn't not even half the story. The Internet would not exist without open standards promoted by bodies like the IETF and W3C (until now).

In the 1980's and early 1990's there were a number of network protocols in use: DECNet, VINES, NETBIOS/NETBEUI (shudder), IPX/SPX, SNA, and more. None of them initially would have been as scalable as TCP/IP. However, if any of them had been truly open, it might have been possible to fix them.

But none of those other protocols were open... and where are they now? Nowhere.

It's the same situation for hypertext protocols. People and companies have proposed substantial improvments onto existing protocols. A notable example of this is Hyper-G, which was then commercialized by Hyperwave.com. It fixes a lot of problems with navigation, and stuff like broken links. However, there was never a free and open implementation, and so it has languished in obscurity for the last 5 years.

My question to the W3C is this: Do they have any evidence that proprietary protocols will foster continued growth of the Internet and the applications that run on top of it?

Weitzner:
Here are two answers:

[snide] What evidence? The IETF, since at least October 1996 when RFC 2026 went into effect, explicitly allowed standards track specs to have RAND encumbrances. The question really is: has the IETF has been irrelevant, useless, and closed since 1996? I don't think that it has, but you may have another view. [/snide]

[more_serious] There's no question that core protocols and document formats have a far greater chance of being widely deployed and well-designed if they can be widely implemented, without payment of royalties. The question is whether that means that every spec W3C does has to be RF? [/more_serious]

Make up of the RAND committee?
by fperez
I would like to ask why this committee is so heavily biased towards the legal side in its makeup. Of course there should be lawyers there, since it deals with legal issues. But these issues have a tremendous impact on technology --in particular on its free exchange. Yet the members come from the IP departments of huge corporations, with little visible representation of technical people from the free software world.

The W3C is setting up a standard which will potentially harm many free software projects, yet is not giving that side any true voice in the drafting committee. I find it hard to believe that this was not a deliberate decision driven by corporate interests.

This attitude is sad, short sighted, and at the very least ungrateful. It avoids acknowledging the extent to which the free software world has contributed to the very existence and success of the internet as we know it.

Weitzner:
In early October we announced that we have invited Bruce Perens (OSI co-founder) and Eben Moglen (FSF General Counsel) to join the Patent Policy Working Group as 'invited experts' with full participation privileges. They've already begun working with the group and I'm really pleased with what they've been able to add so far.

We should have done this earlier. We will, in the process going forward be sure to learn from this lesson and the process going forward will be more open. What's important though is that the final policy will certainly reflect their participation.

Documents for reference:

• W3C Patent Policy Framework Working Draft - 16 August 2001
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/
• Backgrounder for W3C Patent Policy Framework - 20 August 2001
  http://www.w3.org/2001/08/patentnews
• Response to Public Comments on the W3C PPF WD
  http://www.w3.org/2001/10/patent-response
• Patent Policy Working Group Face-to-Face Meeting Summary
  http://www.w3.org/2001/10/ppwg-cupertino-ftf-summary.html

Daniel Weitzner is Chairperson of the World Wide Web Consortium's Patent Policy Working Group,the body that is deciding if it's okay to charge "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (RAND) license fees for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. We sent him the questions you asked back on October 8. Here, at long last, are his answers.

Why should standards be for sale?
by Fleet Admiral Ackbar
My question is - There have traditionally been two types of standards. The first type is an agreed standard, such as the RFCs. The 'market' has no say, but there is a presumed compensation in the availability and usability of said standard. The second type is a 'de facto', or 'market' standard. This standard is decided by people voting with their checkbooks.

So, "we" get what "we" want, but we have no guarantees of availability, usability, or definability.

Doesn't the idea of charging to use the standards combine the worst features of both? Doesn't doing so severely compromise the respectability of the process?

Weitzner:
Internet and Web standards (some might say specifications, but I won't quibble) have tended to be a mixed product of market-driven and agreement-driven selection. In both W3C and the IETF, specifications only advance when they show indications of being widely-deployed (there are exceptions) and generally agreed-to. Adding a fee for implementers would certainly have some impact on this process, but I'm not sure it's the one you point to.

You suggest that the potential to earn license fees on a particular standard would drive its adoption. It seems equally possible that standards for which one has to pay a fee would see low levels of deployment, which could prevent a spec from receving full standard status. The IETF, which has some experience with standards that have license fees associated with them, won't advance a spec too far on the standards track unless it's clear that license fees are reasonable 'enough' to allow broad implementation. After, a number of commenters on Slashdot and www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org have suggested that there would be no open source implementation of RAND standards at all. That would certainly have an impact on the level of deployment.

The Patent Policy WG draft proposed included two possible licensing modes:

(1) Royalty-Free: specs produced in this mode would have as a requirement that they be implementable royalty-free. If information about patents came to light that indicated the spec could not, in fact, be implemented RF, then the WG responsible would either have to take some action (design around, secure RF licenses, etc.) to make it RF, or switch status to a RAND group.

(2) RAND: RAND specs would have to be implementable on a RAND (which could include a zero royalty) basis.

The Patent Policy WG (PPWG) included RAND as an one of the two options for several reasons:

(a) There is evidence that in other technology arenas RAND standards work perfectly well. For example, CD players, TVs, phones, all come with significant patent royalty obligations for their producers, but these devices are nevertheless widely available at seemingly affordable prices.

(b) Disallowing technologies which may only be available for a fee (RAND terms) would deny the Web access to the best technology available.

(c) If W3C adopts an RF-only model, then many important Web technology standards may end up being developed at other standards bodies or industry consortia.

W3C is now in the process of assessing whether the RAND-RF balance we struck in the Last Call draft is the policy we should adopt. As chair of the PPWG, I can't predict the outcome, but can tell you that this issue is being seriously debated. When we put out another draft policy, the public will also have a chance to comment more (if that's possible :-) ) on this subject.

abuse of fees and rights?
by Alien54
How do you propose to police, if at all, the potential of abuse from the imposition of fees, so that the interests of all parties, especially simple users and developers are protected.

Examples of abuse that I would want to avoid include the Fiasco with the licensing fees for implementing .GIF files many years AFTER they became a standard, and the recent action by MS to enforce a two year upgrade cycle for use of their software in businesses, when many companies are much more comfortable with a three or four year upgrade cycle. (ZDNet has had several articles critical in the extreme of that action)

I would very much prefer the situation to be similar, say, to domain name registration, where many parties can provide that service.

Weitzner:
One approach to abusive or unfair licensing practices would be to rescind the Recommendation. It's clear that having a W3C Recommendation that would require patented technology increases the value of the patent to the patent holder substantially. So, if the patent holder is not willing to license its patent in some terms (RF or RAND depending on the policy we adopt) then we should consider rescinding the Recommendation as it cannot promote interoperability. W3C is discussing a mechanism to do this.

I don't understand the DNS analogy. Yes, there is competition being introduced into the domain name registration space, but patents are, by their nature a monopoly. Requring either RF or RAND licensing, which is what the proposed policy does, is a mechanism to require that particular patents held by particular entities are available on at least some 'reasonable' terms. (See the answer to question #5 and #10, too.)

standards vs patents
by jeffy124
It's always been my opinion that standards are something developed for the general free use of the public. Standards are often decided upon by organizations such as NIST, IEEE, academia, etc.

Patents on the other hand aren't standards in my opinion. Commercial companies have traditionally been the ones pushing for patents and when they obtain one, they charge users of it a license fee.

A lot of patents are very useful and deserve to be standards, but I feel they should have the fees removed before it can be called a 'standard.' The patent can still stand after something has been standardized, but I dont think people should be charged to use it.

What's your call on opinions like mine that are carried by many individuals here at slashdot?

Weitzner:
To me, the fundamental question is: what approach to patents and standards will best serve the goals of building, maintaining and expanding the Web as a universal information space? That Web standards have been implemented royalty-free until how. I believe it's clear that the Web would not have the reach or the accessibility it does if we had to rely on the more traditional, patent-driven standards to work, but it's ultimately hard to predict what would happen if the world were different.

Some have asked, 'if it ain't broke why fix it?' But the relationship between patents and Web standards is increasingly broken. At W3C we've had several specs with threats of license fee demands. And, there are an increasing number of patents surfacing where the licensing intentions are not clear. So we have to take steps to provide a licensing environment that meets our goals rather than just relying on a series of historical accidents and well-placed good will that has worked in the early days of the Web. This means that we can't do nothing, we can't refuse to acknowledge the existence of software patents. We have to find ways to make sure that where there are patents that essential to implement a given Recommendation, that they are known and available on terms that make widespread, diverse implementations possible.

A bit naive?
by sphealey
In it's Response to Public Comments [on RAND], W3C states W3C takes no position on the public policy questions surrounding software patents. Isn't that statement at best naive? The Internet and Web were originally designed with the idea of free and open communication. Today, there are powerful forces that would like to see open communication closed down and the Web turned over entirely to commercial pursuits. If a RAND policy is adopted for Web standards, won't the next move by those commercial entites be to create as many propriatry standards as possible and force them on the entire Web community (using hammers such as DMCA), like it or not?

Weitzner:
Here are the considerations that went into the scope of the W3C Patent Policy and why we don't take up the software patent policy debate:

First, we are a technical standards organization, not lobbyists or, for the most part, lawyers. We think that we are pretty good at developing standards, but don't view it as our mission to lobby to have laws changed. Therefore, we need a patent policy that deals with the present-day reality of software patents, which exist in a variety of forms in a variety of countries (not just the US) around the world.

Second, we are an international organization, so even if we succeeded at changing US patent law, or the law in another country, as long as any country has software patents we have to deal with them.

Your question seems to suggest that we are being 'naively' dragged along in a larger campaign to make the Web into a more closed, proprietary environment. I think that you are right to point out that the Net is subject to a greater range of regulation than it was five or ten years ago, but you're mistaken to suggest that the patent policy we proposed is in support of that trend. To the contrary, as I've said in question (3), even the policy as proposed in August would go a long way to make it more certain that core infrastructure standards can be implemented on a royalty-free basis. I agree that any Web standards that are legally required for all Web software (or even just key tools such as servers or browsers) should be implementable on an RF basis.

[See my answer to #12, too.]

Who will define 'reasonable'?
by drew_kime
What's reasonable for me, or for any other small, independant developer, is probably not what's reasonable for, say, Adobe, Microsoft or Macromedia. So will they be allowed to pay "unreasonabley" low liscensing fees, or will I be asked to pay "unreasonably" high fees? It seems that "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder.

Weitzner:
Reasonable is measured in light of prevailing license rates paid in the market. Question number 10 does a nice job of illustrating how this might work.

Why follow other standards bodies? by sphealey
In its Response to Public Comments, W3C made the following statment:

4. Is RAND licensing common for bodies like W3C? Yes. A RAND license is common among standards organizations.

One of the strongest criticisms of organizations such as ISO and ITU is that they charge exhorbitant fees to even read, much less implement, their standards. Some government entities have even gone so far as to incorporate proprietary standards into laws, such that individuals have to right to read the laws that they can be jailed for violating (e.g. Veeck vs. City of Austin).

The Web and Internet have always been unique in having their standards freely available for review and implementation. Is it a good thing for W3C to seek to emulate the "closed source" standards bodies?

Weitzner:
You're not exactly correct about all Internet standards (See my point about the role of RAND licensing in the IETF in #12) but I do think it's important to preserve the openness of W3C and IETF. Even the proposed policy, which would allow RF or RAND standards to be developed at W3C, is far more supportive of the RF tradition than ANY other standards body. The proposed policy provides a way for W3C to decide to do an standard on an RF basis and to hold ourselves to that goal, forcing the spec off the Recommendation track if non-RF patents are discovered and there is no way to avoid paying a fee.

Fork in Standards?
by ProfDumb
If the RAND patent proposal is adopted by the W3C, there has been much discussion in the open source/free software community about forking the standards process, to preserve patent-free web standards. This fork would create a new standards body as a competitor to the W3C.

1.Do you think such a fork is likely if the proposal passes?
2.If a fork does happen, what are the consequences for the web?
3.Should the W3C take the likelihood of a fork into account when considering this proposal?

Weitzner:
Serially:

1. If the proposed policy passes we would do some standards as Royalty-Free standards and some as RAND. I can certain imagine the free software folk would seek to develop alternate standards in those areas where we had RAND standards.

2. A complete fork, that is a competing set of standards for all W3C Recommendations whether RAND or RF, would be very destructive. I'm also not sure that it would be successful in the RF case, because there wouldn't be a practical reason to do it, for most open source projects, except on a boycott basis.

3. Under the proposed policy, I would say that we would have to take the possibility of a fork on particular Recommendation into account before we decided to go RAND.

Finally, you can have as many standards organizations as you like and there will still be patents out there. Forking Web standards development doesn't answer the question of what to do, given that patents are out there. W3C has been burned by this. The only responsible course we feel we can take is to create clarity through an explicit policy.

Can you define "non-discriminatory"?
by BeBoxer
Can you please define exactly what it means for licensing terms to be "non-discriminatory", since the definition has a huge bearing on open source software?

For example which, if any, of the following examples would be non-descriminatory?

A) Fixed per-unit licensing costs. Let's say, for example, $1.00 per unit shipped. While this would be non-descriminatory in some senses, it would also prohibit free software and hence be descriminatory in other ways.

B) Licensing fees only for non-free software. While this method would not descriminate against open source, it could be seen as "descriminating" against closed-source software since they would be the only ones paying licensing fees.

C) Percent-of-price fees. For example, 5% of the price of shipped units. This would seem to be fair since the same licensing terms would apply to everyone, but in practice it would be similar to B) and hence seen as descriminatory.

D) Free for everyone to use. This would seem to be the only license which cannot be viewed as descriminating against someone. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that this is not what is intended when the W3C uses the term "RAND".

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated, I'm sure

Weitzner:
The general understanding of non-discrimination in US law is that 'similarly situated parties are treated similarly.' Consider an example from a different legal realm, shipping. Most common carriers (like railroads and truckers) were historically required to charge non-discriminatory shipping rates. So, if you charge Customer A $1000 to ship 2 tons of freight 500 miles, then you must charge Customer B who comes along $1000, too.

If Customer B's load is actually harder to ship for some reason (it takes up more space in your truck, or requires special handling) then you can charge B more without being accused of discriminating. But if you charge B more than A simply because you like A better, or because B might be competing against you in some other business, then that's discriminatory.

The Patent Policy Working Group has on its agenda to consider the precise interaction between both the RF and RAND license models in the draft Patent Policy on the various flavors of Open Source licenses. So, I don't have an answer to that question yet, but it will be answered by the time we propose another draft policy. (I'll take your examples to the PPWG, too.)

RAND
by someone247356
The W3C must realize that ANY fee no, matter how reasonable they may seem, would have the effect of not allowing free and open source developers to participate.

I am sure that you are aware of the fact that the internet as we all know and love/hate it was developed by free and open source software.

Certain commercial developers, have been trying to convert the internet from, "...the greatest democratizing medium..." (ACLU vs. Reno) into yet another commercial morass where they can reap the maximum profit from the unsuspecting populous.

Given that, why would the W3C even concieve of a proposition that favors corporate purse strings over the greater good of the common man, and the internet itself?

We have seen governments try to regulate what we can say (CDA, CDA II, COPA), corporations what we can do (DMCA, SSSCA, DRM) and even ICANN with the warped sense of justice embodied in its UDRP. Does the common internet user now have to be leery of standards bodies like the W3C, which appears to favor corporate interests?

Weitzner:
You're inviting an answer here of the form 'trust us'. That's really not for me to say, though, it's for the community at-large to decide through individual actions. Will independent developers continue to implement our standards, comment on our draft specs, etc?

These questions are going to be answered over time, based on the way our final patent policy looks and how it actually works. I do hope that the independent developer community has reason to continue to work with us, if not trust us. I hope that in the wake of the 2500+ comments we've received that people have recognized that we have responded in a way that seeks more input (by extending the comment period), involved recognized open source leaders (Bruce Perens and Eben Moglen were added to the group charged with developing the policy, and more may be added, too).

Most important, the W3C Process requires that we put out regular public drafts for review and that there will be another Last Call draft before we finalize a policy.

Your reference to Reno v. ACLU does touch a nerve for me, though. I was one of the lawyers who organized the First Amendment challenge to the CDA, resulting in the US Supreme Court overturning the law and enshrining wonderful quotes such as the one about democracy that you cited, into US law.

I'm reminded of 1991 when the US Congress allowed the Internet (at the time the NSFNet) to be opened to commercial traffic. Many advocates of the status quo (research, education, and mostly-benign Usenet chatter) predicted terrible results from allowing commercial content and commercial providers on to the Net. They, those academics and government folk who had the run of the Net in the 80s, felt that the Net should remain a public, non-commercial resource, run by the (US) government.

The switch to commercial use did happen and it's clear that we are all the better for it. Without that, most of us would not be online and there would be no Web, no Freenet, no Napster, and only closed, proprietary email systems like the old Prodigy. The point of this historical digression is NOT that we should accept RAND standards as part of the inevitable commercialization of the Web. Rather, we should recognize that the Net that we know and love will change and can survive change if we handle it wisely.

Define "reasonable."
by overshoot
I chair a JEDEC committee. JEDEC's legal office reserves the right to define "reasonable" in our RAND clause.

Since all of our standards apply to hardware with well-understood costs of manufacture, the royalty structure most often adopted is "fixed percent of OEM price." This is a necessity in a market where semiconductor prices drop with Moore's Law, and a trivial royalty one day dominates the price the next.

In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.

The alternatives, as we've already seen, can be as extreme as one-time charges in the millions of dollars. For Microsoft, able to amortize a flat-fee across hundreds of millions of units, the royalty would indeed be "reasonable." For Joe Startup, it would be prohibitive.

So, my question: what prospects do we have that RAND will be clarified, preferably with guidelines such as "percent of ASP," but at least with exclusion of abominations such as flat-fee?

Weitzner:
So far we've decided that we do not have a good mechanism within W3C for assessing or defining reasonableness. Generally that's done in private negotiations or sorted out by a court. We've come to that conclusion because there do not seem to be well-established models for Web software royalties, as there are in your hardware examples. If we adopt a policy that includes a RAND component, and if we discover that the lack of definition is a problem, I am sure that we would reconsider.

What about patents that only exist in the US
by mocm
If the w3c want to use patented technology in standards, what are they going to do about patents that only exist in the promiscuous US patent system and would never be granted in other countries. Or even the other way around. Won't that turn the world wide web into a us only web or at least split it into lots of separate entities?

Weitzner:
The problem you bring up will be one for the patent holder (not W3C, which does not hold, nor plans to hold any patents). Patents can generally only be enforced over implementations sold or distributed in the country where the patent is issued. So, if a company has a US patent that is essential to a W3C Recommendation, then it could only seek royalties for products/services distributed in the US.

International and Third World ramifications
by dpilot
Many parts of the Third World are attempting to join the information age. Typically they are strapped for resources, and so far the ability to get on the internet with minimum barriers to entry has been key for them. The availability of free software has been essential. Not just free for use, but free for them to enter the development process, both to meet local needs and to build their technical base.

Doesn't patent encumbrance of W3C standards constitute another barrier to entry for poorer nations?

Even if we are willing to give them all copies of some proprietary web browser, aren't we still standing in the way of their developing their own technical expertise, because they won't have access to and use of the source code.

Doesn't it come across just a little like (Pardon the inflammatory language, but it exaggerates the argument appropriately.) fat Western capitalist pigs trying to keep the Third World down?

Weitzner:
W3C has worked very hard to be sure that our Recommendations meet internationalization requirements to that the World Wide Web lives up to its name. And, we put a lot of energy into reaching out to countries whose technology sectors are in early stages of development. So while I don't necessarily accept that nefarious intentions in the flaming part of your question, I do think that we have to pay special attention to the result that you predict.

We need open standards
by ansible
People from the W3C have "acknowledged" that the Internet's growth has been due to open standards.

This isn't not even half the story. The Internet would not exist without open standards promoted by bodies like the IETF and W3C (until now).

In the 1980's and early 1990's there were a number of network protocols in use: DECNet, VINES, NETBIOS/NETBEUI (shudder), IPX/SPX, SNA, and more. None of them initially would have been as scalable as TCP/IP. However, if any of them had been truly open, it might have been possible to fix them.

But none of those other protocols were open... and where are they now? Nowhere.

It's the same situation for hypertext protocols. People and companies have proposed substantial improvments onto existing protocols. A notable example of this is Hyper-G, which was then commercialized by Hyperwave.com. It fixes a lot of problems with navigation, and stuff like broken links. However, there was never a free and open implementation, and so it has languished in obscurity for the last 5 years.

My question to the W3C is this: Do they have any evidence that proprietary protocols will foster continued growth of the Internet and the applications that run on top of it?

Weitzner:
Here are two answers:

[snide] What evidence? The IETF, since at least October 1996 when RFC 2026 went into effect, explicitly allowed standards track specs to have RAND encumbrances. The question really is: has the IETF has been irrelevant, useless, and closed since 1996? I don't think that it has, but you may have another view. [/snide]

[more_serious] There's no question that core protocols and document formats have a far greater chance of being widely deployed and well-designed if they can be widely implemented, without payment of royalties. The question is whether that means that every spec W3C does has to be RF? [/more_serious]

Make up of the RAND committee?
by fperez
I would like to ask why this committee is so heavily biased towards the legal side in its makeup. Of course there should be lawyers there, since it deals with legal issues. But these issues have a tremendous impact on technology --in particular on its free exchange. Yet the members come from the IP departments of huge corporations, with little visible representation of technical people from the free software world.

The W3C is setting up a standard which will potentially harm many free software projects, yet is not giving that side any true voice in the drafting committee. I find it hard to believe that this was not a deliberate decision driven by corporate interests.

This attitude is sad, short sighted, and at the very least ungrateful. It avoids acknowledging the extent to which the free software world has contributed to the very existence and success of the internet as we know it.

Weitzner:
In early October we announced that we have invited Bruce Perens (OSI co-founder) and Eben Moglen (FSF General Counsel) to join the Patent Policy Working Group as 'invited experts' with full participation privileges. They've already begun working with the group and I'm really pleased with what they've been able to add so far.

We should have done this earlier. We will, in the process going forward be sure to learn from this lesson and the process going forward will be more open. What's important though is that the final policy will certainly reflect their participation.

Documents for reference:

• W3C Patent Policy Framework Working Draft - 16 August 2001
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/
• Backgrounder for W3C Patent Policy Framework - 20 August 2001
  http://www.w3.org/2001/08/patentnews
• Response to Public Comments on the W3C PPF WD
  http://www.w3.org/2001/10/patent-response
• Patent Policy Working Group Face-to-Face Meeting Summary
  http://www.w3.org/2001/10/ppwg-cupertino-ftf-summary.html

Janet Daly of W3C sent along a note about the VoiceXML 2.0 draft specification. As you may recall, VoiceXML is useful to make your web server speak. Daly points out that as things stand, many members have declared that they have patents related to the standard and would require royalty payments. Like the other W3C/patent issues we've posted about recently, they're seeking public feedback.

jdaly writes: "Today, W3C announced that VoiceXML 2.0 has been issued as a first public Working Draft. Press materials went across various wire services. Rather than send simply a press release here, W3C would like to give more specific information of interest to Slashdot readers. Of note is a section from the "Status of the document" section of VoiceXML 2.0 draft:

"This document seeks Member and public comment on both the technical design and the patent licensing issues arising out of the disclosure and licensing statements that have been made. Our decision to publish this first public working draft has been made to secure early comments from the community, but does not imply that all questions of patent licensing have been resolved or clarified. They must be resolved or work on this document in W3C will stop.

As things stand at the time of publication of this specification, implementations conforming to this specification may require royalty bearing licenses for essential IPR. Further information can be found in the patent disclosures page. The patent policy for W3C as a whole is under wide discussion. A set of commitments by all participants in the Voice Browser Activity to royalty free is a possibility for the future but has NOT been made at time of publication."

As IPR issues are important to Slashdot readers, we are striving to make this information available to them as soon as possible. W3C strongly encourages those with an interest in this specification to consider using the comment list, www-voice@w3.org, which is archived. There is no deadline for comments on a first public Working Draft.

Regards, Janet Daly, W3C"

Janet Daly of W3C sent along a note about the VoiceXML 2.0 draft specification. As you may recall, VoiceXML is useful to make your web server speak. Daly points out that as things stand, many members have declared that they have patents related to the standard and would require royalty payments. Like the other W3C/patent issues we've posted about recently, they're seeking public feedback.

jdaly writes: "Today, W3C announced that VoiceXML 2.0 has been issued as a first public Working Draft. Press materials went across various wire services. Rather than send simply a press release here, W3C would like to give more specific information of interest to Slashdot readers. Of note is a section from the "Status of the document" section of VoiceXML 2.0 draft:

"This document seeks Member and public comment on both the technical design and the patent licensing issues arising out of the disclosure and licensing statements that have been made. Our decision to publish this first public working draft has been made to secure early comments from the community, but does not imply that all questions of patent licensing have been resolved or clarified. They must be resolved or work on this document in W3C will stop.

As things stand at the time of publication of this specification, implementations conforming to this specification may require royalty bearing licenses for essential IPR. Further information can be found in the patent disclosures page. The patent policy for W3C as a whole is under wide discussion. A set of commitments by all participants in the Voice Browser Activity to royalty free is a possibility for the future but has NOT been made at time of publication."

As IPR issues are important to Slashdot readers, we are striving to make this information available to them as soon as possible. W3C strongly encourages those with an interest in this specification to consider using the comment list, www-voice@w3.org, which is archived. There is no deadline for comments on a first public Working Draft.

Regards, Janet Daly, W3C"

Janet Daly of W3C sent along a note about the VoiceXML 2.0 draft specification. As you may recall, VoiceXML is useful to make your web server speak. Daly points out that as things stand, many members have declared that they have patents related to the standard and would require royalty payments. Like the other W3C/patent issues we've posted about recently, they're seeking public feedback.

jdaly writes: "Today, W3C announced that VoiceXML 2.0 has been issued as a first public Working Draft. Press materials went across various wire services. Rather than send simply a press release here, W3C would like to give more specific information of interest to Slashdot readers. Of note is a section from the "Status of the document" section of VoiceXML 2.0 draft:

"This document seeks Member and public comment on both the technical design and the patent licensing issues arising out of the disclosure and licensing statements that have been made. Our decision to publish this first public working draft has been made to secure early comments from the community, but does not imply that all questions of patent licensing have been resolved or clarified. They must be resolved or work on this document in W3C will stop.

As things stand at the time of publication of this specification, implementations conforming to this specification may require royalty bearing licenses for essential IPR. Further information can be found in the patent disclosures page. The patent policy for W3C as a whole is under wide discussion. A set of commitments by all participants in the Voice Browser Activity to royalty free is a possibility for the future but has NOT been made at time of publication."

As IPR issues are important to Slashdot readers, we are striving to make this information available to them as soon as possible. W3C strongly encourages those with an interest in this specification to consider using the comment list, www-voice@w3.org, which is archived. There is no deadline for comments on a first public Working Draft.

Regards, Janet Daly, W3C"

Janet Daly of W3C sent along a note about the VoiceXML 2.0 draft specification. As you may recall, VoiceXML is useful to make your web server speak. Daly points out that as things stand, many members have declared that they have patents related to the standard and would require royalty payments. Like the other W3C/patent issues we've posted about recently, they're seeking public feedback.

jdaly writes: "Today, W3C announced that VoiceXML 2.0 has been issued as a first public Working Draft. Press materials went across various wire services. Rather than send simply a press release here, W3C would like to give more specific information of interest to Slashdot readers. Of note is a section from the "Status of the document" section of VoiceXML 2.0 draft:

"This document seeks Member and public comment on both the technical design and the patent licensing issues arising out of the disclosure and licensing statements that have been made. Our decision to publish this first public working draft has been made to secure early comments from the community, but does not imply that all questions of patent licensing have been resolved or clarified. They must be resolved or work on this document in W3C will stop.

As things stand at the time of publication of this specification, implementations conforming to this specification may require royalty bearing licenses for essential IPR. Further information can be found in the patent disclosures page. The patent policy for W3C as a whole is under wide discussion. A set of commitments by all participants in the Voice Browser Activity to royalty free is a possibility for the future but has NOT been made at time of publication."

As IPR issues are important to Slashdot readers, we are striving to make this information available to them as soon as possible. W3C strongly encourages those with an interest in this specification to consider using the comment list, www-voice@w3.org, which is archived. There is no deadline for comments on a first public Working Draft.

Regards, Janet Daly, W3C"

Janet Daly of W3C sent along a note about the VoiceXML 2.0 draft specification. As you may recall, VoiceXML is useful to make your web server speak. Daly points out that as things stand, many members have declared that they have patents related to the standard and would require royalty payments. Like the other W3C/patent issues we've posted about recently, they're seeking public feedback.

jdaly writes: "Today, W3C announced that VoiceXML 2.0 has been issued as a first public Working Draft. Press materials went across various wire services. Rather than send simply a press release here, W3C would like to give more specific information of interest to Slashdot readers. Of note is a section from the "Status of the document" section of VoiceXML 2.0 draft:

"This document seeks Member and public comment on both the technical design and the patent licensing issues arising out of the disclosure and licensing statements that have been made. Our decision to publish this first public working draft has been made to secure early comments from the community, but does not imply that all questions of patent licensing have been resolved or clarified. They must be resolved or work on this document in W3C will stop.

As things stand at the time of publication of this specification, implementations conforming to this specification may require royalty bearing licenses for essential IPR. Further information can be found in the patent disclosures page. The patent policy for W3C as a whole is under wide discussion. A set of commitments by all participants in the Voice Browser Activity to royalty free is a possibility for the future but has NOT been made at time of publication."

As IPR issues are important to Slashdot readers, we are striving to make this information available to them as soon as possible. W3C strongly encourages those with an interest in this specification to consider using the comment list, www-voice@w3.org, which is archived. There is no deadline for comments on a first public Working Draft.

Regards, Janet Daly, W3C"

Janet Daly of W3C sent along a note about the VoiceXML 2.0 draft specification. As you may recall, VoiceXML is useful to make your web server speak. Daly points out that as things stand, many members have declared that they have patents related to the standard and would require royalty payments. Like the other W3C/patent issues we've posted about recently, they're seeking public feedback.

jdaly writes: "Today, W3C announced that VoiceXML 2.0 has been issued as a first public Working Draft. Press materials went across various wire services. Rather than send simply a press release here, W3C would like to give more specific information of interest to Slashdot readers. Of note is a section from the "Status of the document" section of VoiceXML 2.0 draft:

"This document seeks Member and public comment on both the technical design and the patent licensing issues arising out of the disclosure and licensing statements that have been made. Our decision to publish this first public working draft has been made to secure early comments from the community, but does not imply that all questions of patent licensing have been resolved or clarified. They must be resolved or work on this document in W3C will stop.

As things stand at the time of publication of this specification, implementations conforming to this specification may require royalty bearing licenses for essential IPR. Further information can be found in the patent disclosures page. The patent policy for W3C as a whole is under wide discussion. A set of commitments by all participants in the Voice Browser Activity to royalty free is a possibility for the future but has NOT been made at time of publication."

As IPR issues are important to Slashdot readers, we are striving to make this information available to them as soon as possible. W3C strongly encourages those with an interest in this specification to consider using the comment list, www-voice@w3.org, which is archived. There is no deadline for comments on a first public Working Draft.

Regards, Janet Daly, W3C"

Welcome to Slashback for 20011018 -- read below for an update on Code Red (is Red Dead?), RAND patents in Web standards (some semi-good news on that front), the sad death of some MIDI software, and an upgrade for Thailand.

Please write your elected W3C representative. haplo21112 writes "The W3C has posted a next-steps comment on the mailing list for the Patent Policy Frame Work proposal.

It announces among other things that two Open Source People have been added to the working group as Invited experts, Eben Moglen (General Counsel, Free Software Foundation) and Bruce Perens (Co-Founder of the Open Source Initiative). They have also announced a home page for the Working Group at: http://www.w3.org/2001/ppwg/

Especially interesting is the Second Objection noted on the page from IBM, where basically they are revealed as one of the drivers of the proposal. They grumble about RF and pretty much say they would vastly prefer RAND."

You'd like to think so, eh? ColaMan writes: "Is CodeRed finally dead? I've had a counter on my webserver (yay apache!) that tracks attempts, but since the start of the month only 1 lone attempt has been logged on our permanent IP dialup connection (and that was just overnight). This compares to 2490 attempts for August and 931 for September. Nimda still seems to be plodding along though - I've had 159 unique ip's so far this month and 466 for September. Knowing that my IP address is in some bandwidth-forsaken backwater of the internet, I was wondering how things were going CodeRed-wise in the Real Internet?"

I forget -- does the M stand for "Microsoft," or "Macintosh"? An Anonymous Coward writes: "Remember this story from last Tuesday asking about audio applications on linux? Today the Jazz++ mailinglist declared jazz++ dead (find the message here). While not the perfect midi sequencer, jazz++ is robust and GPL'd. Since jazz++ only appeared twice in the postings (each moderated at +1 ...) related to the earlier story, it would seem this fine product has low visibility among the /. crowd. The only viable GNU/Linux midi solution died the same week ./ had a call for audio solutions on Linux. Gotta love irony..."

From Bundesrat to Bangkok Germany may be considering it, but Thailand is doing them one better. TheMMaster writes "According to this article on newsbytes, the Thai government will switch to open-source software, linux on the desktop, StarOffice. This is a nice example of OSS, and probably why a lot of people contribute, to help people (OK and for fun)"

As usual, the actual developers float high above the flames on their behalf. Yep, KDE is 5 years old -- and fm6 writes: "A nice contrast to the usual GNOME-versus-KDE flamage: the users of news.gnome.org wish KDE a happy 5th birthday." Remember, the flame wars you see about these two projects have little to do with the fact that both have already created killer desktops, and are continuing to do so faster than human beings should be allowed to travel.

Welcome to Slashback for 20011018 -- read below for an update on Code Red (is Red Dead?), RAND patents in Web standards (some semi-good news on that front), the sad death of some MIDI software, and an upgrade for Thailand.

Please write your elected W3C representative. haplo21112 writes "The W3C has posted a next-steps comment on the mailing list for the Patent Policy Frame Work proposal.

It announces among other things that two Open Source People have been added to the working group as Invited experts, Eben Moglen (General Counsel, Free Software Foundation) and Bruce Perens (Co-Founder of the Open Source Initiative). They have also announced a home page for the Working Group at: http://www.w3.org/2001/ppwg/

Especially interesting is the Second Objection noted on the page from IBM, where basically they are revealed as one of the drivers of the proposal. They grumble about RF and pretty much say they would vastly prefer RAND."

You'd like to think so, eh? ColaMan writes: "Is CodeRed finally dead? I've had a counter on my webserver (yay apache!) that tracks attempts, but since the start of the month only 1 lone attempt has been logged on our permanent IP dialup connection (and that was just overnight). This compares to 2490 attempts for August and 931 for September. Nimda still seems to be plodding along though - I've had 159 unique ip's so far this month and 466 for September. Knowing that my IP address is in some bandwidth-forsaken backwater of the internet, I was wondering how things were going CodeRed-wise in the Real Internet?"

I forget -- does the M stand for "Microsoft," or "Macintosh"? An Anonymous Coward writes: "Remember this story from last Tuesday asking about audio applications on linux? Today the Jazz++ mailinglist declared jazz++ dead (find the message here). While not the perfect midi sequencer, jazz++ is robust and GPL'd. Since jazz++ only appeared twice in the postings (each moderated at +1 ...) related to the earlier story, it would seem this fine product has low visibility among the /. crowd. The only viable GNU/Linux midi solution died the same week ./ had a call for audio solutions on Linux. Gotta love irony..."

From Bundesrat to Bangkok Germany may be considering it, but Thailand is doing them one better. TheMMaster writes "According to this article on newsbytes, the Thai government will switch to open-source software, linux on the desktop, StarOffice. This is a nice example of OSS, and probably why a lot of people contribute, to help people (OK and for fun)"

As usual, the actual developers float high above the flames on their behalf. Yep, KDE is 5 years old -- and fm6 writes: "A nice contrast to the usual GNOME-versus-KDE flamage: the users of news.gnome.org wish KDE a happy 5th birthday." Remember, the flame wars you see about these two projects have little to do with the fact that both have already created killer desktops, and are continuing to do so faster than human beings should be allowed to travel.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The W3C upgraded XSL 1.0 to the status of a recomendation today, as they reported in a press release." From that release: "XSLT 1.0 makes it possible to significantly change the original structure of an XML document (automatic generation of tables of contents, cross-references, indexes, etc.), while XSL 1.0 makes complex document formatting possible through the use of formatting objects and properties."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The W3C upgraded XSL 1.0 to the status of a recomendation today, as they reported in a press release." From that release: "XSLT 1.0 makes it possible to significantly change the original structure of an XML document (automatic generation of tables of contents, cross-references, indexes, etc.), while XSL 1.0 makes complex document formatting possible through the use of formatting objects and properties."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The W3C upgraded XSL 1.0 to the status of a recomendation today, as they reported in a press release." From that release: "XSLT 1.0 makes it possible to significantly change the original structure of an XML document (automatic generation of tables of contents, cross-references, indexes, etc.), while XSL 1.0 makes complex document formatting possible through the use of formatting objects and properties."

Danny Weitzner is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium's Technology and Society activities, which means he's in charge of handling reactions to a W3C proposal that would allow "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (hence "RAND") license fees to be charged for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. Many prominent Free Software and Open Source people are firmly against RAND; RMS has even emailed me personally several times, asking me to post a link to this anti-RAND story (in which he is quoted). Slashdot has mentioned this controversy before, because we, too, feel it's important.. But Danny is the person at W3C who is dealing directly with all of this, so he's the person we should question. So ask away, one question per post as usual, and we'll post Danny's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he gets them back to us.

Danny Weitzner is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium's Technology and Society activities, which means he's in charge of handling reactions to a W3C proposal that would allow "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (hence "RAND") license fees to be charged for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. Many prominent Free Software and Open Source people are firmly against RAND; RMS has even emailed me personally several times, asking me to post a link to this anti-RAND story (in which he is quoted). Slashdot has mentioned this controversy before, because we, too, feel it's important.. But Danny is the person at W3C who is dealing directly with all of this, so he's the person we should question. So ask away, one question per post as usual, and we'll post Danny's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he gets them back to us.

Danny Weitzner is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium's Technology and Society activities, which means he's in charge of handling reactions to a W3C proposal that would allow "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (hence "RAND") license fees to be charged for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. Many prominent Free Software and Open Source people are firmly against RAND; RMS has even emailed me personally several times, asking me to post a link to this anti-RAND story (in which he is quoted). Slashdot has mentioned this controversy before, because we, too, feel it's important.. But Danny is the person at W3C who is dealing directly with all of this, so he's the person we should question. So ask away, one question per post as usual, and we'll post Danny's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he gets them back to us.

KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."

KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."

KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."

KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."

KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."

Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.

Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.

Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.

Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.

Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.

Holger Blasum writes: "The W3C is closing its last call for comments on its future patent policy (with disputed RAND: "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing") on 30 Sept 2001. One of the authors of the framework argues this to be not uncommon (and, in fact, RFC 2036's section 10.3.3 has it too). As it is common practice, the W3C has set up an archived mailing list (www-patentpolicy-comment-request@w3.org) for comments. Adam Warner has outlined (mirror) some possible consequences for th e SVG standard."

Holger Blasum writes: "The W3C is closing its last call for comments on its future patent policy (with disputed RAND: "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing") on 30 Sept 2001. One of the authors of the framework argues this to be not uncommon (and, in fact, RFC 2036's section 10.3.3 has it too). As it is common practice, the W3C has set up an archived mailing list (www-patentpolicy-comment-request@w3.org) for comments. Adam Warner has outlined (mirror) some possible consequences for th e SVG standard."

Holger Blasum writes: "The W3C is closing its last call for comments on its future patent policy (with disputed RAND: "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing") on 30 Sept 2001. One of the authors of the framework argues this to be not uncommon (and, in fact, RFC 2036's section 10.3.3 has it too). As it is common practice, the W3C has set up an archived mailing list (www-patentpolicy-comment-request@w3.org) for comments. Adam Warner has outlined (mirror) some possible consequences for th e SVG standard."