HP, Apple Drop Support for Royalties on Web Standards
Posted by
michael
on from the peer-pressure-works dept.
Medeii writes: "This article on CNET states that Apple and HP have both decided to withdraw their support for the recommendation. Both companies issued statements supporting the development of royalty-free web standards. Both were, interestingly, also authors of the current recommendation."
Of course, the good question is... Will this be a case where Apple and HP drop support publically and the issue dissapears (And then quietly reappears 6 months later in a different form) or the case where Apple and HP drop support publically and it just goes on as if nothing happened (Like Adobe's dropping support of suing for Acrobat-Crackers);)
Some major companies have enough trouble conforming to free web standards as it is and break and make their own standards. Creating standards that require royalties to use will just make companies do things their own way even more.
Re:Definately a Surprise
by
firewort
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Carly must have realized that you can't make profits when paying fees to use everyone else's patents!
I'm pleased that Apple chose this route as a customer, and dissapointed that IBM hasn't, as an employee. Not surprised, just disappointed.
--
These guys get a lot of exposure, so
by
trilucid
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm not at all surprised they've shifted gears on this one. And might I add, it's *probably* got something to do with the public opinion on this topic;).
I think (can't say for certain of course) this puts solid evidence behind the concept of making an effort to comment on proposed specs and such. I suppose this falls into the same category as "write to your representatives", although we seem to having better luck on the royalty front today than on legislative issues.
To all who submitted requests that this "standard" not be adopted, you certainly have my thanks (and most likely the thanks of hundreds of thousands of developers who want a royalty-free standards system).
Re:Good for them
by
dinotrac
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Sometimes they do, but I doubt that's the case here, not that it matters.
I have no doubt that a careful re-examination of the issue should have made them realize that each has more to lose than to gain with RAND standards.
First, it's impossible to devise a non-discriminatory standard that imposes a royalty fee. The receiver of the royalties always has the advantage.
Second, such a system, by favoring the biggest players (as they are the ones likely to finagle the largest number of such standards), it would favor the status quo. Not so bad if you're Microsoft or IBM or even Sun. Less wonderful if you're HP or Apple.
this isn't all too surprising
by
LazyDawg
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe Apple is trying to protect valuable marketshare as a web appliance producer. Closed or RAND-based licensing schemes would not help them maintain standards compliance, and many of the currently free but very useful Mac apps for browsing the web would have to change strategies.
Finally, a company figuring out that its restrictive practices with licensing have hurt their marketshare and the industry at large.
-- "Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Re:Good for them
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Nor are individuals.
Royality internet standards?
by
ZaneMcAuley
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
How can a royality based so called standard be a standard? Isnt a standard based on mutual agreement or compromise?
Kinda goes against the spirit doesnt it.
--
-----
Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Was there any member of the w3c who didn't support this at all?
Any company which did support it and now doesn't is just reacting to the fact that they got caught out trying to screw the entire internet community for a quick buck.
--
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
Re:Well, what a nice surprise.
by
DNS-and-BIND
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Someone's got doom-and-gloom clouding their eyes. The fanatical social outcasts of such causes as feminism and animal rights appear to do a damn good job forcing their views on both corporations and society in general.
-- Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:Good for them
by
Phroggy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I wonder what happened to make them change their minds. Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Apple is trying to change what they are known for. Five years ago, they were known for having a proprietary operating system that ran on proprietary hardware. Three years ago they got rid of the proprietary hardware, and now they've got an open-source OS. There's still a proprietary GUI on top of the OS, but there's a pretty open feel to parts of it. Storing preferences in XML. Bundling Apache and OpenSSH. I compiled WindowMaker!
-- $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$]; $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Re:Definately a Surprise
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Many of the people I have known who work there consider Carly's main interest to be profit, and EVERYTHING else comes second."
So you're saying she's a CEO? well no shit. Find me a CEO that isn't interested in profit first, and I'll show you a CEO who is gonna be on the street.
Surprisingly, MS was not on the pro-patent side in this argument.-------> Not so surprising. What would happen if some other outfit got a patent on some core technology (the "next big thing") and MS had to license the technology from them?
Hoist on their own petard comes to mind. I'm sure they would not want to take a chance on being put into that position.
I think someone on here posted that MS has a strict policy of not paying royalties for technology use; they either work around outside patents or purchase them outright.
Remember, nobody really knows what the "next big thing" will be....
-- If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I think Apple just did it
by
Drizzit
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Naturally a company will do something like this if they believe it is to their benefit, but with Apple they truly seem to be trying real hard to help open standards along and because the company, is such a reflection of Steve Jobs, it unlike other large companies can have a conscience as generally what Steve says goes. Corporate culture they say starts at the top, and you can see several examples of Apple's commitment to open standard support. They use XML extensively. When they needed to add additional web support to AppleScript they choose to use XML-RPC and SOAP. Once they had a platform that can run it, they have fully and as completely as they can integrated Java as a core language and environment for OS X. They make sure that OS X ships with perl and Open SSH and TCL and PHP. I know you say that its a Unix OS and they just got that for free, but your wrong its a Mac OS and they had to put man hours in to updating the packages and then QA, no Mac OS has had these by default before and Windows (their primary competitor) doesn't but they did anyway.
Plus look at some of these quotes
Quote from Fink's FAQs (fink.sourceforge.net)
"Apple is aware of Fink and has started to support us as part of their Open Source relations efforts. So far they are providing us with pre-release seeds of new Mac OS X versions in the hope that Fink packages can be adapted in time for the release. Quote: "Hopefully it underscores the commitment that many suspect we're not willing to provide. We'll get better at the open source game over time." Thanks Apple! "
Quote from the ask Darwin (www.apple.com/darwin)
"Q: Can I add something to Darwin (using the Open Source versions), then run the rest of Mac OS X on top of it?
A: Since Mac OS X is built using that same repository, and so many components are fully Open Source, the answer is generally yes. However, a few Mac OS X components (particularly Core Foundation) include both open and non-open code, so replacing Mac OS X pieces with the "Darwin" version would result in a loss of functionality (and potentially an unusable system). Our goal is to have a clean separation of open and non-open components, so that it becomes easy to interchange a customized Darwin system into a Mac OS. For example, many non-open drivers are available as loadable binary modules, allowing them to be used with a Darwin (or Darwin-ized) system. We are also looking at ways to make it identify to find out which versions of Darwin code correspond to shipping versions of Mac OS X."
Plus Apple within 2 weeks had the Darwin 1.4.1 CD image out (1.4.1 corresponds to X.1).
So to end my long ramble, I think Apple just did this, because I think the guys running the show at Apple Steve, Avie, Rubenstien etc all believe in open standards and Apple's actions in the last while support this.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the good question is... Will this be a case where Apple and HP drop support publically and the issue dissapears (And then quietly reappears 6 months later in a different form) or the case where Apple and HP drop support publically and it just goes on as if nothing happened (Like Adobe's dropping support of suing for Acrobat-Crackers) ;)
Gentoo Sucks
Some major companies have enough trouble conforming to free web standards as it is and break and make their own standards. Creating standards that require royalties to use will just make companies do things their own way even more.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Carly must have realized that you can't make profits when paying fees to use everyone else's patents!
I'm pleased that Apple chose this route as a customer, and dissapointed that IBM hasn't, as an employee. Not surprised, just disappointed.
I'm not at all surprised they've shifted gears on this one. And might I add, it's *probably* got something to do with the public opinion on this topic
I think (can't say for certain of course) this puts solid evidence behind the concept of making an effort to comment on proposed specs and such. I suppose this falls into the same category as "write to your representatives", although we seem to having better luck on the royalty front today than on legislative issues.
To all who submitted requests that this "standard" not be adopted, you certainly have my thanks (and most likely the thanks of hundreds of thousands of developers who want a royalty-free standards system).
Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Sometimes they do, but I doubt that's the case here, not that it matters.
I have no doubt that a careful re-examination of the issue should have made them realize that each has more to lose than to gain with RAND standards.
First, it's impossible to devise a non-discriminatory standard that imposes a royalty fee. The receiver of the royalties always has the advantage.
Second, such a system, by favoring the biggest players (as they are the ones likely to finagle the largest number of such standards), it would favor the status quo. Not so bad if you're Microsoft or IBM or even Sun. Less wonderful if you're HP or Apple.
Maybe Apple is trying to protect valuable marketshare as a web appliance producer. Closed or RAND-based licensing schemes would not help them maintain standards compliance, and many of the currently free but very useful Mac apps for browsing the web would have to change strategies.
Finally, a company figuring out that its restrictive practices with licensing have hurt their marketshare and the industry at large.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Nor are individuals.
How can a royality based so called standard be a standard? Isnt a standard based on mutual agreement or compromise?
Kinda goes against the spirit doesnt it.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Was there any member of the w3c who didn't support this at all?
Any company which did support it and now doesn't is just reacting to the fact that they got caught out trying to screw the entire internet community for a quick buck.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
Someone's got doom-and-gloom clouding their eyes. The fanatical social outcasts of such causes as feminism and animal rights appear to do a damn good job forcing their views on both corporations and society in general.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I wonder what happened to make them change their minds. Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Apple is trying to change what they are known for. Five years ago, they were known for having a proprietary operating system that ran on proprietary hardware. Three years ago they got rid of the proprietary hardware, and now they've got an open-source OS. There's still a proprietary GUI on top of the OS, but there's a pretty open feel to parts of it. Storing preferences in XML. Bundling Apache and OpenSSH. I compiled WindowMaker!
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"Many of the people I have known who work there consider Carly's main interest to be profit, and EVERYTHING else comes second."
So you're saying she's a CEO? well no shit. Find me a CEO that isn't interested in profit first, and I'll show you a CEO who is gonna be on the street.
Surprisingly, MS was not on the pro-patent side in this argument.-------> Not so surprising. What would happen if some other outfit got a patent on some core technology (the "next big thing") and MS had to license the technology from them?
Hoist on their own petard comes to mind. I'm sure they would not want to take a chance on being put into that position.
I think someone on here posted that MS has a strict policy of not paying royalties for technology use; they either work around outside patents or purchase them outright.
Remember, nobody really knows what the "next big thing" will be....
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Naturally a company will do something like this if they believe it is to their benefit, but with Apple they truly seem to be trying real hard to help open standards along and because the company, is such a reflection of Steve Jobs, it unlike other large companies can have a conscience as generally what Steve says goes. Corporate culture they say starts at the top, and you can see several examples of Apple's commitment to open standard support. They use XML extensively. When they needed to add additional web support to AppleScript they choose to use XML-RPC and SOAP. Once they had a platform that can run it, they have fully and as completely as they can integrated Java as a core language and environment for OS X. They make sure that OS X ships with perl and Open SSH and TCL and PHP. I know you say that its a Unix OS and they just got that for free, but your wrong its a Mac OS and they had to put man hours in to updating the packages and then QA, no Mac OS has had these by default before and Windows (their primary competitor) doesn't but they did anyway.
Plus look at some of these quotes
Quote from Fink's FAQs (fink.sourceforge.net)
"Apple is aware of Fink and has started to support us as part of their Open Source relations efforts. So far they are providing us with pre-release seeds of new Mac OS X versions in the hope that Fink packages can be adapted in time for the release. Quote: "Hopefully it underscores the commitment that many suspect we're not willing to provide. We'll get better at the open source game over time." Thanks Apple! "
Quote from the ask Darwin (www.apple.com/darwin)
"Q: Can I add something to Darwin (using the Open Source versions), then run the rest of Mac OS X on top of it?
A: Since Mac OS X is built using that same repository, and so many components are fully Open Source, the answer is generally yes. However, a few Mac OS X components (particularly Core Foundation) include both open and non-open code, so replacing Mac OS X pieces with the "Darwin" version would result in a loss of functionality (and potentially an unusable system). Our goal is to have a clean separation of open and non-open components, so that it becomes easy to interchange a customized Darwin system into a Mac OS. For example, many non-open drivers are available as loadable binary modules, allowing them to be used with a Darwin (or Darwin-ized) system. We are also looking at ways to make it identify to find out which versions of Darwin code correspond to shipping versions of Mac OS X."
Plus Apple within 2 weeks had the Darwin 1.4.1 CD image out (1.4.1 corresponds to X.1).
So to end my long ramble, I think Apple just did this, because I think the guys running the show at Apple Steve, Avie, Rubenstien etc all believe in open standards and Apple's actions in the last while support this.