[Patents] Web Standards Debate Raises Ire

[seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson)]

(Forwarded from Interesting People list)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2001 05:43:48 -0400
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>


> Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2001 11:15:33 +1100
> From: Nathan Cochrane <ncochrane@theage.fairfax.com.au>
>
> Hi Dave
>
> I spoke to Carl Cargill, Sun Microsystems' director of standards last  
> Friday. Cargill was responsible for pushing RAND in the W3C, a proposal  
> that has angered so many people.


Web Standards Debate Raises Ire

Tuesday 09 October, 2001
By NATHAN COCHRANE

It's back to the drawing board for a working group that proposed
embedding  patents in future Web standards following unprecedented
outrage from the online community.

The Sun Microsystems intellectual property lawyer who initiated the
discussion that blew up last week into a heated flame war, said he was
amazed at the "visceral" response from the online community.

Carl Cargill, Sun's director of standards, proposed in April last year
to an intellectual property rights forum held by the British Open Group,
to include patents in future Web standards. He said he was motivated by
a bitter struggle during the latter phases of the Java language
standardisation.

...

"It took Sun, after we took a beating with Java, to say let's look at
the  rules and now people see how important (intellectual property
rights)  are," Cargill said.

"Why did the other people duck their responsibilities?  This was part of
the standards process, why did it have to be W3C; where was ISO
(International Standards Organisation), where was ANSI (American
National Standards Institute)?"

[snip]

http://it.mycareer.com.au/news/2001/10/09/FFX52P06JSC.html

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