Re: [Patents] Re: IBM, Microsoft, BEA Snub W3C

[Hamdija Hodzic <hamdija.hodzic@ijs.si>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Xavi Drudis Ferran" <xdrudis@tinet.org>
To: "iriXx" <iriXx@iriXx.org>
Cc: "Xavi Drudis Ferran" <xdrudis@tinet.org>; "Russell McOrmond"
<russell@flora.ca>; "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>;
<seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>; "Patent forum" <patents@aful.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 10:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Patents] Re: IBM, Microsoft, BEA Snub W3C


> El Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 12:38:53PM +0100, iriXx deia:
> >
> > >Protesting against those who have economical interest in destroying
their
> > >market (by monopolising it) and no obligation to listen to protesters
> > >is wasting time compared with protesting to elected legislators and
> > >publicizing the issues.
> >
> > maybe, but what can we actually do about this monopoly? it is quite a
> > concern - given that IBM and Microsoft have patented much of the ebXML
> > technology. shades of the Sun vs MS Java story... when one player has
> > enough power over the market, whatever they introduce will become a
> > de-facto 'standard' regardless of W3C, as Microsoft have already proved
> > by distorting W3C standards in Explorer.
> >
> > what is the best way to protest against this sort of behaviour? i
> > believe Sun treated it as antitrust, but antitrust trials are risky and
> > expensive. perhaps lobbying for *implementation* of W3C standards is a
> > way forward?
> >
>
> One way is informing the public and, yes another would be demanding
normalization
> in government contracts (just the same as when you demand that sheets of
paper
> should be DIN A4 you could demand that a web application has to produce
valid
> XHTML 1.0 Transitional pages, or something like that, and I don't think it
is
> too radical that the government also demands adherence to standards for
communications
> from citizens, but that is slightly less clear).
>
> But my point was that at least it must be demanded that law enforced
monopolies
> of 20 years are not imposed on us. We have enough monopolies with the ones
resulting
> from network effects.
>
>
> --
> Xavi Drudis Ferran
> xdrudis@tinet.org
>