Web standards sales: the W3C reassures

The W3C heard the grievances of the pro open source on a delicate theme: the possibility to allow private companies to licence web standards. At the end of the consultation period which ended last October 11th, two representatives of the open source were invited to join the Patent Policy Working Group (PPWG), working group of the W3C who works on the matter. Moreover, as VNUNet mentions it in an article "W3C Licences: the pro free software consulted” ", the W3C, in order to prove his good will, has gathered the overall of interventions on-line on this theme through the diffusion lists and public documents (see the “"Patent Policy Working Group public home page").

The matter caused uproar in the sector of free software in September and beginning of October (see article "Will the W3C allow the sale of web standards"). Will the World Wide Web Consortium, which established itself as the guarantor of the Internet interoperability, allow that some of its standards be submitted to a licence, even on a very flexible form? The open source sector, busy during summer time, when their project was developed, raised at the beginning of September. Thus, the day after the closure of the contribution forum, on October 12th, Daniel J. Weitzner calm things downed. The manager of the PPWG programme sent an e-mail to contributors to announce reassuring measures and open the doors for discussion.