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W3C Ponders RAND Again
simonstl writes "Three unnamed W3C participants have suggested a new RAND policy that would let the W3C into the business of charging royalties for patent-encumbered specs. No consensus yet, but they sure seem to keep trying."
One minute the W3C are complaining about people who don't stick to their standards, and the next they're stating that using the standards might cost you money. Its madness.
The web was built on open and unrestricted standards, yet the people in charge seem keen to bow to pressure from a few special interest groups (and does anyone believe the proposers of this licensing aren't massive corporations with deep pockets) and cut off the thing that made it grow in the first place. I despair, sometimes.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Because not one of us will be able to read the letter in a few minutes...
Hello,
Twenty people attended the 1 July 2002 Patent Policy Working Group
(PPWG) teleconference. The meeting was devoted to a new RAND
exception proposal circulated by three participants and the Chair.
When non-royalty-free IPR is discovered in a W3C Working Group, a
Patent Advisory Group (PAG) might have a number of possible
outcomes. The proposal suggests that the Working Group's
specification could be split in two. "Core" work to be licensed
royalty-free would be produced as a W3C Recommendation.
"Extensions" that may require royalties could be done at W3C or by
another standards organization.
One person suggested Extensions work be dropped. Some said work at
the other standards organization needs to be a cooperative effort
with W3C. One person suggested a hybrid all produced at W3C. One
asked if the Core/Extensions split makes Extensions work less
important than Core. The consensus seemed to be that specs built on
top of Core work are valuable and that standardizing them is
important.
The group did not appear to universally accept the proposal.
Discussion may continue when the group meets next on 8 July.
Best wishes,
--
Susan Lesch
http://www.w3.org/People/Lesch/
mailto:lesch@w3.org
tel:+1.858.483.4819
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
http://www.w3.org/
Am I the only one confused by this letter...?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Actually, the other way around is more likely, since Microsoft is a member company in the W3C.
(Aside: the W3C doesn't patent things itself - this policy is about dealing with situations where one of it's member companies holds a patent on something that will be part of a standard. Any royalties that are assessed will go to that member company, not to the W3C. I thought that was obvious, personally, but from reading the comments in this story, apparently not...)
Thus, the more likely scenario is that Microsoft patents some key part of some future web standard which the W3C then ratify, so that all implementors of it have to pay Microsoft! Can you imagine AOL, Opera, Macromedia etc all having to pay money to their primary competitor just to be allowed to compete?
To see that Microsoft ignores standards is not entirely accurate. IE 6 is actually very close to being 100% compliant with W3C standards. I would say that CSS2 is probably the weak spot. The problem is that they also have many propietary "extensions" that some designers favor. This is what makes a website IE dependent. I think you'll also find that VS.NET does a very good job at creating compliant websites. Hopefully as these sites move to ASP.NET from plain vanilla ASP they will also become more accesible to other browsers.
Fair enough...
RAND = Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory Licensing.
This is what RMS thinks about it.
W3C = World Wide Web Consortium.