Ask the W3C's RAND Point Man

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.

Comments

Why should standards be for sale?

[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?

A bit naive?

[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?

sPh

Two questions (I know, not fair.)

[dinotrac]

I have two questions:
1. How can you have non-discriminatory licensing from platform vendors? If Microsoft charges itself a $25 license fee and offers the technology to everyone else for the same $25, that is not non-discriminatory. For Microsoft, it's merely account-shuffling. For everyone else, it's out-of-pocket.

2. Why support fiefdoms with RAND? Why not refuse to even consider any standard that the submitters have not already agreed to license freely for Web use (ie, even if they have patents, you have secured free use) and to indemnify the W3C and Web users against any claims by patent holders whose patent applications the submitters were aware of?

Why do you think anybody cares?

[streetlawyer]

The last time I looked, there were about three pages on the Web which were "W3C compliant" (and my God did they let us know about it). Given the prevalance of all sorts of non-compliant garbage out there which nevertheless works with 90% of browsers (or to give it its proper name "Internet Explorer"), why do you think anyone gives a wet slap what the W3C thinks anymore?

Netscape and IE are the de facto standards bodies these days; the browser wars are over and the days when standards were needed are over too. Apart from a gang of standards barrack-room lawyers going "Oh, I use WebFart 2000 because it's standards compliant blah blah blah", nobody cares anymore.

So my question is; why are you giving up the last shred of self-respect you might have had as a lobby group against the encroachment of the IE monopoly as a de facto standard, by turning yourself into a shill group for the same bunch of corporate interests? To preserve the fig-leaf of the "importance of standards"? Isn't that rather like destroying the village to save it?

We need open standards

[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?

How will RAND make human society better?

[merlin_jim]

The W3C has, somewhat unintentionally, become a central clearinghouse that defines how humans fundamentally communicate with each other in this digital age. As a result, it is necessarily the W3C's responsibility to pay attention to how their actions affect society.

I would like to know, both from a W3C standpoint, and from your own personal belief, how you feel that RAND will improve human society. Also, do you feel that it is befitting a standards organization to approve a standard that is patented?

Which is more important in such a case, that the patent is honored, which could kill the standard or even cause hardship for those who can't afford it, or that the standard is released royalty free so that all of humanity can benefit? How do you reconcile this statement with W3C's role in society?

Thanks,
Jim McCracken