Slashdot Mirror
W3C Approved Patent Policy: Royalty Free Standards
Danny Weitzner writes "The World Wide Web Consortium has approved the W3C
Patent Policy based on review by the W3C Advisory Committee and thanks to lots of input and cajoling from the Open Source community and slashdoters. Read the public Director's decision. We're the first major standards organization that sets the explicit goal of producing only standards that can be implemented without paying patent royalties. Our policy requires legal commitments from all who contribute to the development of Web standards that patents held by the contributor will be available on royalty-free terms. Both proprietary and open source software have been critical to the growth of the Web. With this policy, we intend to enabled continued innovation by both open source and proprietary development."
Some good developments in the great techno-legal world war. There had been too many bad ones lately...
This one would have been a small disaster if it had gone wrong. Now let's hope the EU makes the right decision too!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
It's really a shame that they have to allow patents at all. If they didn't they'd alienate most commercial contributors who'd then go to another standards body, or none at all. Since they do allow patents, though, it continues to promote the rediculous patenting of software processes.
Developers: We can use your help.
I doubt that this will be that great a deal - instead, look for the W3C to become less and less relevant going forward. In the next few years, you'll see more proprietary development, or worse yet, alternative coalitions made up of proprietary vendors who don't care to give their IP away for free...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Yes it would. But that's not what the WC3 is doing, they aren't ending software patents. They are saying that nothing that requires paying royalties on a patent to implement can be part of the standard. You can patent your cool new *ML generator but you can't require everyone who uses *ML to pay a fee. This will allow more people to inovate not stifel inovation.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
That's where the technology buyers become important. When deciding on a particular platform, the PHB's may have a great deal to say about what vendor to use, but it's the tech people (the CTO, if the company is large enough to have one) that determines the basic capabilities of the proposed system. With a stated checkbox-item to use only published W3C standards where applicable, for instance, the buyers can greatly influence what technologies their vendors will support. Some vendor-specific formats nonwithstanding, this is pretty much what has happened in most areas of information technology.
Vote with your money, in other words.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You're confusing sales with service, the misconception that the factory model of software development is the same as the service model. At least 85 to 90% of developers do not work for companies that sell software for profit (factory model). They work for companies that need software written for their own purposes or to service others (developers in a service model). Removing all software companies will not remove much money from the equation. Most developers are paid for their service, not for their output, i.e. they're paid to get software written, not to sell bits. People pay to get software which gets the job done either by buying bits from companies with patents, which is the exception, or by buying services, which is the rule. Patents only work for the few selling bits such as Microsoft. Patents don't help most of the industry working as a service.
Developers: We can use your help.
Anyone else find it interesting that this post was made a few minutes ago and almost instantly got exactly 4 moderation points for being interesting?
I'll tell you what's left when you remove royalties from the equation -- and it certainly isn't shills like you. It is innovation, freedom, and advancement for everyone. Why should I have to pay a guy a buck because he came up with the idea of a "shopping cart" on a website? Why can't I take the idea and move it forward? It is alright to patent machines and such, but patenting ideas is absurd. (And, on a lesser note, I wouldn't mind them patenting their code and only their code -- but what's the use of that?)
And ask yourself this: did the internet grow by leaps and bounds because Microsoft came out with IIS or because a bunch of organizations decided to pool their efforts to make one solid web server that can be configured to do anything a web server should do? I personally think proprietary software is holding us back and costing us far more than the cost of licensing the software because we can't take their ideas and build on them.
Then where do we get paid? Two ways: By implementing existing solutions in a way that people can use them, or by implementing entirely new solutions. For both instances, people are willing to pay money to have someone else do it. For both instances, it really doesn't matter whether the end result is Open Source or proprietary to them. We know that going the Open Source will allow us to satisfy more people with better products than the other case, because IT will constantly be evolving and building on the successes and failures of the past, rather than limiting the growth to one giant monopoly.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.