Re: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

> I agree with Mike Champion that the W3C is 
> a terrible place to create standards and a wonderful 
> place to incubate technology but that is beside the 
> question of what do terms like standards mean to 
> the community looking for guidance.  

Also, what to do about the vendor community
that's touting W3C specs as "standards", while
W3C has been at best sluggish to fill in essential
gaps like conformance testing and what might be
called "brand maintainence".  (Vendors seem free
to use the W3C trademarks without being notably
spec-conformant...)


> Also included on that page are the links to the 
> decision by Dell to quit offering Linux on desktops 
> based on lack of demand.  It is still a market 
> driven development world despite all efforts to 
> resit that.

As if most of us looking for Linux options on
our laptops _ever_ saw them from Dell!  That
makes me laugh.  I once browsed their website
and saw they charged _extra_ for Linux, in the
few high-end cases it could even be an option!!

Which does show that the market has a role,
but in this case the stupid pricing policies mad
the signal be easily mis-interpreted.

- Dave