W3C Patents Recommendation, Continued
11:23 AM - Oct 4, 2001
Dori Smith and Jeffrey Zeldman have some very helpful comments and insight.
My own view remains that I feel W3C needs to fill in some holes in its language regarding RAND and "Royalty-free" to prevent potential problems. I’d like to see the W3C clarify which technologies are royalty-free, for example. Vague language can lead to being taken advantage of, and I’d certainly like to see those possibilities avoided.
The other point Jeffrey Zeldman states,
Our other problem with RAND, and it’s a subjective one, is that the timing stinks. The W3C seems not to have noticed that New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania were brutally attacked on 11 September by an enemy or enemies who chose not to take "credit" for their acts of war.
W3C, pull your heads out of your labs. The entire world is on tenterhooks, praying for peace and security while preparing for global devastation. This is hardly the time to expect web users and developers to contribute intelligently to the discussion of vaguely-worded documents with potentially far-reaching consequences. By all standards of decency, W3C should have put RAND on the shelf.
It is indeed pretty tough right now. I also find it curious that they happened to choose October 11 as the deadline, the one month anniversary of the attacks, but it doesn’t look they considered that, either. For this I’m quite disappointed.
I agree with Jeffrey that this entire issue ought to be shelved for awhile. What’s the big hurry anyway?