Little off the subject...Does anyone know where I can post a Unix C programming position? Sincerely, Kimm King TECHSTAFF INC The Technical Placement Specialists 3900 E Camelback Road, Suite 108 Phoenix, AZ 85018 602/955-6464/602-955-8784 (fax) kimm@techstaffaz.com < mailto:kimm@techstaffaz.com> www.techstaff.com < http://www.techstaff.com> "The highest compliment you can give our office is a referral." -----Original Message----- From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Victor Odhner Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 10:00 AM To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us Subject: Re: Web right in danger Trent Shipley wrote: > They best way for liberty-ware to deal with proprietary standards > is to get there first, or best, or de facto and basically turn the > free-ware version *into* the standard. To an extent, W3C can make itself irrelevant by failing to champion the world-wide availability of standard web technology, IF the open source community continues to set de facto standards. Of course this doesn't reduce the danger of Legal DoS attacks as Hans points out. Hans, is that your own coinage? It's a useful concept that may help activate other techies on the legal/political front. Now, let me muse about a different angle. Tim Berners-Lee has been vocal about patents in the past: http://content.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990512S0013 http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_09/uk/dires.htm Tim himself is a major player in the Curl development which involves patents, licenses, etc. The legal framework is designed in such a way as to allow free non-commercial use of the tools at the browser end. The Curl Surge plug-in may refuse to display commercial Curl content from unlicensed sites. I gather that the Surge plug-ins are not open source. So, a few questions: 1. While Tim has cited the effects of the GIF patent, doesn't his own project carry some of the same risks? This especially since Tim and others of like mind might lose control of the company and its patents. 2. If not, for the sake of argument, would it be reasonable for W3C to allow some patented technologies, structured in this way, to be included in the standards? I'm mainly trying to reconcile Tim's statements about the harmfulness of patents on the Web with his participation in this project. Vic ________________________________________________ See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail. PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss