Re: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)

[Guy Murphy <guy-murphy@easynet.co.uk>]

Something key which is being missed here is that the W3C produces
"recommendations".

This may appear semantic hair splitting, but is quite important, and
deliberate on the W3Cs part... it is there to facilitate.

Its safer for the W3C to take this route as it has no intention of spending
the amount of time on specs as say the ISO. Many quaters feel this more
suitable (rightly or wrongly) for the fast pace of the internet.

It is by design a looser standards body. The adoption of it's
recommendations are correspondigly looser too.... again, rightly or wrongly.

It is perhaps worrying if government bodies are starting to cite W3C
recommendations in legislation other than in "best practice" clauses, where
I feel it may well be appropriate.

It's also important to note that to a degree (what degree is wide open to
debate), the growth of internet and in particualr Web technologies, and
correspondingly rec adoption has been organic in terms of what is adopted
and what is left to whither and die (XSL:FO), or be resigned to a niche....
interestingly individual Web developers used to represent quite a "force" in
this process, wheras of late presure of movement tends to have swung, again
by degree to the corporate institutions.

I've wandered from the point... what is my point?... well, simply I'm not
sure how helpful comparisons between the W3C and ISO are.

And remember ISO specs are exactly renouned for being terribly friendly, and
take quite a while to produce.... be careful what you wish for if it's a
more ISO-like W3C.

Cheers
    Guy.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
To: "Justin Couch" <justin@vlc.com.au>; <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 2:17 PM
Subject: RE: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)


> View conformance testing as a service and that
> is the approach they generally take.  They set
> the standard, can provide inspections and tests,
> and certify results.  This ties results to the
> right to carry the trademark.  Now you have a case.
>
> However, the biggest difference among many of these
> organizations is who ratifies the results of the
> process.   The ISO members are law making bodies
> (governments) and can cite ISO, W3C, IETF, documents
> etc. in policies with various kinds of acts enabled
> for failure or success in meeting these.  They tend
> to cite ISO standards.  They are now also citing W3C specs.
>
> Len
> http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
>
> Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
> Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Justin Couch [mailto:justin@vlc.com.au]
>
> There are two possiblities. AFAIK the ISO group has no legal standing
> where you can take someone to court for "violating our specification".
> However! There are other ways they can take them on - false advertising,
> use of trademarked symbols infringement (that red/silver logo with the
> ticks on it) etc. These are all civil actions. (Have a look at how Sun
> handles the Jini and Java compatibility issues - you effectively license
> the trademarked logo and nothing else).
>
> > if BigBozoCo's claims to implement the W3C XML Schema spec, and
> > it turns out that they didn't actually have the developers waste their
> > valuable time implementing all those boring
>
> Again, you could take them on in a civil action - false/deceptive
> advertising and more. Just depends on how big your pockets are v
> company. At least here in Oz the deceptive advertising penalties are
> really stiff and so discourages companies from doing that.
>
>
> --
> Justin Couch                         http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
> Freelance Java Consultant                  http://www.yumetech.com/
> Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer                  http://www.j3d.org/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now.
> Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism
> processes data according to its domain, its environment; you, with
> all your brains, would be useless in a mouse's universe..."
>                                               - Greg Bear, Slant
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