[FYI] "We'll fork the web to keep it Free" - Perens

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21994.html

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We'll fork the web to keep it Free - Perens  

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco  

Posted: 03/10/2001 at 07:30 GMT  

Free software developers are ready and willing to take up the 
challenge of creating open web standards, if the W3C implements 
royalty-bearing licenses.  

So says open source leader Bruce Perens, in one of the first 
responses to our Q and A with the man steering the W3C's patent 
policy, Danny Weitzner, where the issue of a forked WWW was raised.  

"They say RAND licenses are inevitable - well, that's a choice, you 
know," Perens told us.  

[...]

The Gartner Group agrees that a forked web will be more likely if the 
W3C's RAND policy is implemented, with analyst Kathy Harris saying 
that royalty-bearing standards are divisive and troublesome:-  

"Choosing to allow payment for patents will inevitably encourage 
still more alternative standards bodies (by industry, for instance) 
and domain-specific standards," she writes.  

[...]

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