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So the new killer app emerges: lawsuits.
Joe Williams posted this on the VRML list:
Another patent by this company http://www.eolas.net/technology.html covers
"image space collision detection technology believed to be currently in
widespread use throughout the computer game industry."
Looks like we are in for a major overhaul. Didn't MS
announce that it wouldn't be releasing a new IE as a freebie?
At least the industry at large is finally understanding the
range of these problems. Maybe a common cause will give
hostile camps an incentive to work together. One result
could be to treat the WWW as a public utility so that problems
of IP, standardization, open source vs proprietary, and so
on will get resolved by a central authority. I hate this
as much as anyone else, but if we replicate the evolution
of the telephone and power industries, that's where we're going.
Potential result: a royalty free, object modeled, vetted and certified
set of essential facilities for web systems which are required by
international agreements. Holders of patents on essential facilities
are forced by application of emminent domain to relinquish the IP
but in return are absolved of any and all indemnity claims.
Creators of core technologies that implement the essential facilities
will try to offload them so this could be a big win for
open source but without the GPL because the GPL isn't acceptable
in some mission critical applications, particularly those that
deal with classified information and processes.
Because a monoculture has little disease resistance, the breakup
of the Microsoft hegemony is certain and only a matter of time.
On the other hand, given a public utility approach, they will
come to see the sense in relinquishing their dominance over
the essential facilities because the profit margins will be
so close to zero as to make it a very bad market to be in.
It will be like competing on selling featureless cell phones.
MS will embrace open source for essential facilities.
If MS doesn't do that:
MSThrall companies will have some very tough decisions to make
and possibly sooner than later. They are so dependent on the
MS frameworks that simple code ports won't work. If they decide
to go open source, they have to decompose their products, pull
out the business logic, and rebuild. Some can't do that because
of the GPL but while they resist or muddle by, the smaller
competitors with fleet feet will be converging on the open
standards and getting to market faster and cheaper as the tier
one companies are mired in their 'de facto' standards. Waiting
could be deadly, but moving too quickly will be as well.
Timing is everything. As Admiral Halsey put it,
"Hit hard. Hit fast. Hit often."
len
From: AndrewWatt2000@aol.com [mailto:AndrewWatt2000@aol.com]
Maybe not quite yet ....
but is that the browser's friends I see hovering outside the Intensive Care
Unit?
"In the near term, Microsoft has indicated to W3C that they will very soon
be making changes to its Internet Explorer browser software in response to
this ruling. These changes may affect a large number of existing Web pages."
http://www.w3.org/2003/08/patent
Interesting times indeed!
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