Web standards burnout decried

Santa Clara, Calif.-- Over-standardization, royalty-free standards, and browser wars were on the minds of industry dignitaries serving on a panel discussing the future of the Web at the XML Web Services One conference here on Thursday.

Panelists from consulting services, Sun Microsystems, and Layer 7 Technologies covered these and other issues.

"The Web has become synonymous with the Internet, but I think we're going to see a return to the original diversity" of the Internet, minus command line interfaces, said Jeff Suttor, staff engineer for Web technologies and standards in the Java Web services group at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems.

Suttor had strong feelings about the proliferation of Web standards and royalty-free standardization.

"I think we're suffering from standards burnout," and Suttor.

"The problem that I've seen with standards is it's such a good idea that everybody has one," he said. Suttor joked that there are no more alphabet combinations left for acronyms to represent new standards. He also urged that standards be derived from a community-oriented process and not be imposed in a top-down fashion.

Suttor stressed that standards must be royalty-free, echoing the recent sentiments of other Sun officials. "When I go for a cup of water, I'm willing to pay for the water. I am not willing to pay for a proprietary patent on using a cylindrical device" to hold the water, said Suttor.

"The standards have to be royalty-free," he stressed.

Anne Thomas Manes, research director at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group, said standards organizations and the user community at large should insist on royalty-free protocols. Building technologies on top of protocols and charging money for them is acceptable, but paying money for protocols is "ridiculous," she said.

UcheOgbuji, moderator of the panel and CEO of Boulder, Colo.-based Fourthought, a software cosultancy, noted that certain Web technologies already have been included in patents and questioned how this reality will affect the growth of the Web.

Paul Freeman, an independent consultant specializing in Java and XML, concurred that legal issues involving patents could cloud Internet technologies and suggested patent reform as a solution. "Do you want to reform theU.S.patent trademark office?" he asked.

Panelists also debated the direction of browsers. "We really need XML browsers rather than Web browsers," Freeman said.