RE: [humanmarkup-comment] HumanML Language Components Tasks

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Title: RE: [humanmarkup-comment] HumanML Language Components

Like I said, I understand Kurt's position and Len's and mine own, which is that I try to get what I think is best, accept whatever happens as best I can and try to change what I disagree with. And, one other thing, I try to get as close to the pragmatic facts as I can, and they do not always favor the BIg Boys, who are learning some rather sobering lessons these days about how to get along in the sandbox. Or, rather, their lieutenants and handlers are, while Billy, Scottie and Larry keep on doing the same silly looking things. Add Stevie B to that mix too. One wonders if they ever see a mirror?

" Here, take my national ID card, and all my software company's products, too, please and pay no attention to those other guys, they're all crazy..."

"Oh, and ain't I the hero for taking credit for this here wunnerful idea?" Grrrr

Ciao,

Rex

At 4:10 PM -0500 10/12/01, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:

> I agree.  That potential has been there from the
> beginning.  Mature standards orgs like ISO
> have
> such policies although how much guidance they provide,
> I don't know.  I do know patent issues
> have come up in respect to the X3D work and liaison
> with MPEG.  MPEG is a patent pool
> organization.   I also have problems with
> doing a lot of public work that only becomes
> someone
> else's bob to bounce, and have had to endure that at
> various times.  (I was the MID commitee
> chairman originally and that work got mined like a
> gold rush).   I am sensitive as well but
> I don't know how to work in public and stay behind a
> fence.   Them's the risks.   We
> have
> done what we could by putting HumanML into OASIS. 
> OASIS is the reincarnated SGML Open
> founded by friends of mine whose motivations I respect
> but also whom I have seen put their
> morals in their back pockets and take a profit when
> they had to.  My last meeting with
> Yuri was a bad spat over profit vs standards and he
> was telling me that even if HTML was
> bad design, for the first time, SoftQuad was making
> money.   Money ain't the root of
> *all* evil; sometimes the lack of it is.  Yuri
> was a founding member of SGML Open and
> he did understand the need for an open organization
> and no doubt understood the
> problems of larger vendor dominated
> consortia.    Jon Bosak and others have
> tried
> to carry forward that understanding and that is
> reflected in the OASIS processes
> and low costs to join.  I am not a member; I am
> not a joiner.  It's a private conviction
> so I am probably evern more radical than some of you,
> but I see the benefits of
> the policies.
>  
> That people are only now coming to the understanding
> of the impacts of such on
> the W3C, and the power of the W3C to move forward even
> with such policies
> tells me that there is more than naivete at
> work.   Some are like children who
> at the age of 12 discover Mom is sleeping with the
> neighbor's wife, Dad is a
> closet alcoholic and their brother is gay.  The
> world crashes in.  Some learn
> to accept life's improbable but real potentials, and
> others simply close their
> eyes and try to deny it all.  But if we are to
> work in this world, we have to
> understand boundaries, authorities, entitlements and
> the laws.   Bad laws
> we should change, but we can't get around the rules of
> business that say
> "if it is legal, we'll do it."  
> That is the world as it is.  We have to make it
> what
> we want it to be.   So, this patent issue is
> a problem for the W3C members
> to work out.  Depending on how they do
> that, people have to decide how to
> work with the W3C.  But recognize it for what it
> is, not what some want
> to pretend it is and has never ever
> been.
>  
> len
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Kurt Cagle [mailto:kurt@kurtcagle.net]
> >  
> > Sorry. I am political, and I
> > tend to shoot from the hip at times. I think a patent policy is
> > necessary, I even think that there is room for *discussion* of a RAND
> > like policy, but I get very worked up when I see something that looks
> > like a power-grab, regardless of motivations. Additionally, I think
> > that it is worth making an issue of here, although I'll get off my
> > high horse after this post. I don't want to see a policy or standard
> > that I helped develop become a marketing tool for some company that
> > would essentially go against the very spirit of what was intended in
> > the first place. Here's a very simple point -- suppose that, as RAND
> > allowed, prior art essentially allowed Microsoft to claim XSLT or XML
> > Schema. Microsoft had very early implementations of both. Does this
> > mean that we as the HumanML committee would be required
> > to license these technologies? Or that anyone who used HumanML
> > would be required to license the core technologies from Microsoft? If
> > Microsoft then pushed changes into those standards, would we be
> > required to support them or face getting
> > sued?
> >  
> > Nowhere in the policy is the
> > term Reasonable spelled out. What's reasonable? Licensing fees in the
> > thousands or even millions of dollars? The inability to produce a
> > product because of licensing entanglements? This is important
> > because EVERYTHING that we are doing here are based upon W3C
> > standards in some form or another.
> >  
> > I'm not trying to provoke an
> > argument here, but in many respects, this is perhaps one of THE most
> > portentious events in the history of the W3C, and it goes well beyond
> > XML-DEV. As more and more standards are encoded in XML (and why
> > wouldn't they be -- it's become a universal language) the more that
> > this issue becomes significant, not just for a few developers, but for
> > everyone who uses the Internet.

-- 

Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com

Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request