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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.
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?