|
|
Posted by Grant Robertson on 03/31/07 22:40
In article <MexPh.28010$Ny2.27411@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>,
jkorpela@cs.tut.fi says...
> Scripsit Grant Robertson:
> > I have found that sometimes if one reveals the true reason for a
> > question, then respondents will prejudge one's intent and not provide
> > accurate answers.
>
> So what? Why would you want to get accurate answers to a wrong question
> rather than (assumedly) less than perfect answers to your real question?
> That's what people ask for very often on Usenet, though naturally they tend
> to get inaccurate or wrong answers to their wrong question, and when they
> finally (if ever) tell the real question, few people are interested in
> helping any more.
So, you are telling me that I don't have the right to phrase my question
in such a manner that I truly get the information I am looking for.
Instead, you seem to be telling me that I must phrase all of my questions
in such a manner that you can second guess my needs and only feed me the
answer you think I should have so you can unduly influence my decisions
in the direction you you would take. That is just absurd!
I have been on Usenet practically since there has been a UseNet and I was
on bulletin boards for years before that. I know how to ask questions to
get the information I need and I know that if I ask questions the way you
suggest then all I will get is opinions and conjecture.
so, please just give me a break and stop nagging me because you didn't
get the opportunity to tell me what to do.
> >> The odds of having a useful system for marking up educational
> >> material approved as a W3C "standard" (recommendation) are
> >> comparable to the proverbial odds of a snowball in Sahara.
> >
> > Are you saying that marking up educational material so it is machine
> > parseable is not something W3C is interested in?
>
> I'm not saying much about the reasons for the small odds, but you should
> realize that W3C is an industry consortium driven by the interests of the
> major industry players.
I'll keep that in mind. But all standards overseen by W3C are required to
be licensed freely. Yes the members of W3C are primarily major
corporations. However, the goal is to further open standards because they
believe that will most benefit everyone in the long run. They are not
going to refuse my standard simply because no one can sell it.
Additionally, just because one can't make money selling a license to use
the standard doesn't mean people don't make money selling software that
adheres to the standard.
You really do seem to have a narrow and naive view of how open standards
work. Perhaps you should take a look at the following:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php
http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/BobSutor?
entry=grading_open_standards_what_does
http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/09/open_standards_.html
As you can see, there are patents on many open standards. No one makes
money selling the rights to use the standard. They make money selling
software that uses the standard. Patents are commonly used to prevent
others from modifying a standard in a proprietary manner. In fact, this
is a primary goal of standards bodies.
> >> It is questionable whether anyone would need a license to use some
> >> tags.
> >
> > That is like saying it is questionable whether someone would need a
> > license to use a protocol or to use some lines of code.
>
> No it isn't. Program code is typically protected by copyright, unless it's
> fairly trivial.
Actually, copyright only protects the actual text of the code itself. All
anyone would have to do is change some variable names and comments and
they would not be violating the copyright. Ask an expert in Intellectual
Property. I did, just two days ago. He was very specific about that. One
must get a patent to protect the actual algorithm to achieve the goal.
Naturally many are opposed to software patents but this is only because
they are often misused or issued for trivial things. After seeing a few
patents for things that were both obvious and prior art I get pretty
frustrated as well. However, you would be very interested in a patent if
it was the only way you could protect your ideas from being used by
others to make a profit without compensating you. Well, guess what. It is
the only way you can truly protect a standard or software algorithm. So
just get used to it.
> > Please also keep in mind: I will not be charging any licensing fees
> > for the technology.
>
> Do you think someone is interested?
>
> > I will never "cash in" and sell this technology.
>
> Quite probably, but the main reason is that nobody is interested in buying
> it.
Now you are just being mean for meanness sake. You have no idea what my
standard does or how it might benefit mankind. So why don't you just go
away and let the adults have an adult conversation.
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|