[ale] FW: A side point of importance..yeah, you could say that - Greg

[Bao C. Ha]

> This is pretty scary stuff. Mr. Maddux suggests that
> if the W3C won't back off of their attempt to impose a RAND
> licensing policy, the only alternative would be for the
> open-source community to constitute its own standards body
> and "fork the Web Standards development process". That
> would, IMO, be bad for everyone. It's questionable
> whether the os community could even finance such a
> project, which would require a fleet of patent lawyers
> to ensure that the standards being developed don't
> infringe the patents of the exact same gang of
> bozos who're trying to hijack the W3C.

It is not that bad.  Just one more nail drives into the
W3C coffin.  How really relevant is W3C now?

Anyway, I think HP is backing off from supporting the RAND,
and they are in the committee.  I have not doubt IBM will
think twice.  It's not because they are good guys, but
Microsoft is more of a survival threat to them than some
uncollectible stingy royalties from Joe Blow programmers.

Bao 

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