[whatwg] Re: Is this introducing incompatibilities with future W3C work

Malcolm Rowe malcolm-what at farside.org.uk
Thu Jun 24 07:55:32 PDT 2004


Jim Ley writes:
>> The WHATWG principles are laid out here:
>>   http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/papers/opera.html
> So you're now conceding that this is an Opera thing, not 7 guys who
> don't recognise companies?  We've still not had any patent etc. info.

First off, just to note that that's clearly marked as a joint Mozilla-Opera 
paper. Representing it as being solely from Opera, as if that was evidence 
that Opera is trying to carve a 'proprietry web' is disingeneous. 

Secondly, it's clearly not just 'an Opera thing'. I don't work for Opera, 
and neither do you. 

I do agree that a patent disclosure policy would make sense if the members 
of WHATWG were representing their respective employers, but as they aren't, 
it wouldn't make sense to have one - unless Brendan has a collection of 
JavaScript patents he's trying to slip into the spec :) 

>> Don't forget that all this WHATWG work is intended to be submitted to a
>> standards organisation; like PNG was, for instance.
> Yes, but you've still not told us the roadmap, perhaps if you made all
> that clearer you might get a little more support.

The roadmap is pretty clearly laid out in the group's Charter. There's only 
one bit that isn't, and that's the intention to submit to a standards 
organisation. I think I remember someone saying that we can't talk about 
specific standards organisations, but I don't think there's anything wrong 
with adding a note about the intent to the charter. Ian? 

Regards,
Malcolm



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