In response to "Internet standards must be royalty free" reader Gary Edwards writes:

The issue here is one of deception. Microsoft and IBM cooked their tools and procedures, baking in Web services protocols and methods they claimed would be "open standards." Much posing and posturing went on about standards committees and submitting the proposals to open standards groups like the IEETF and W3C. Thanks to Mr. Berlind and other lone voices in the wilderness like Bruce Perens [co-founder of the Open Source Initiative], we now know that these proposals are not so open. We now know that there are secret patents lying in wait for widespread adoption and use.

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And it's not just the royalty taxes that are problematic. It's the control over developer investments and business models vested in the standards. And haven't we all been here before? At one time Microsoft claimed the Windows API would be open to all, and into this level playing field rushed thousands of anxious developers backed by heavy breathing investors. Opportunity is indeed the mother of invention. However, with the 1992 publication of Andrew Schulman's "Undocumented Windows: A Programmers Guide to Reserved Microsoft Windows Api Functions", the world discovered just what Microsoft meant by "Open Standards." By 1994 the rush to the Internet (and a level playing field based on truly open standards) was on.

No doubt every vendor would like to own the basic protocols and standards for universal connectivity and collaborative computation. No doubt the way to get positioned as the hub of global commerce and exchange is to convince everyone that your methods and means are superior, and worth both the royalty and the measure of trust that goes with the risk of investing everything in someone else's domain.

No one is asking for a free lunch here. All we ask is full disclosure and complete transparency when a corporate consortium comes forward and suggests that we base our entire future on their way of doing things. If Microsoft and IBM truly have no intention of collecting royalties on secret patents, then why are they secret? If their proprietary methods are so great, then people will not only pay them the royalties, but also invest their futures. Just tell us up front.

Instead of being forthright, Microsoft and IBM were deceptive. They posed as honest sponsors of open standards, hoping that their hype machines would super-heat the market, blinding people to invest and get in so deep that there was no way out. Then, when the cost of extraction was painfully high, the royalties and the force of sovereign commands could be exacted. Sink the hook and reel them in.

That's not a free lunch. That's a Judas goat leading lambs to the slaughter. Once again.

Gary Edwards

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