On Mar 26, 2010, at 3:29 AM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
Hi Maciej,
On 26/03/10 3:24 AM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
Apple has chosen not to participate in Widgets standards work at the
W3C.
That's not true, Apple has directly influenced and participated in
the work: remember [1], and the others fun exclusions of late (I
think one even has your name on it). Of course, Apple is free to
exclude whatever it wants... but this seems in contradiction to the
"Apple Computer's Statement on the Draft W3C Patent Policy" [2].
Remember the bit about:
"Apple supports a W3C patent policy with an immutable commitment to
royalty-free licensing for fundamental Web standards. Apple offers
this statement in support of its position."
If Apple no longer supports the W3C's mission and patent policy, you
should probably ask that [2] now be taken down (then happily
continue to exclude patents willy-nilly, as is Apple's right as a
W3C member).
If you keep reading past that sentence, you'll see there is no
contradiction:
"At the same time, the corporate, governmental, institutional, and
individual entities that support Web standardization by contributing
and considering technology for adoption as a standard have legitimate
interests in protecting — through intellectual property rights — the
fruits of their own investments in technology. A patent policy that
requires intellectual property rights owners to commit their valuable
intellectual property in advance and without exception would
undoubtedly discourage participation in the W3C."
"To balance these conflicting interests, Apple believes that W3C
should promulgate only royalty-free standards, but should permit
individual members to identify and exclude specific patents that they
are not willing to license on a royalty-free basis."
Or is it that Apple alone gets to decide what constitutes a
"fundamental web standard" and not the W3C community?
Every W3C Member Company gets to decide which patents they choose to
exclude from royalty-free licensing. Everyone here has agreed to the
W3C Patent Policy as part of their Invited Expert agreement or their
employer's Member agreement, respectively.
Regards,
Maciej
