Bonum Certa Men Certa

The W3C and Fake Authority

Microsoft Shill - TE



Summary: Why the W3C is losing its way now that it is motored by Microsoft, Apple, and IBM (and headed by Novell's former CTO)

Timothy B. Lee (not Berners-Lee), a personal favourite as a writer on the issue of intellectual monopolies (whose opinions are similar to those of Berners-Lee), has published "Reputational Arbitrage" where he refers to "The Fine Line Between Legitimate Think Tank And Industry Shills" as Mike Masnick put it:



Tim Lee recently had an excellent post that deserves even greater attention. It kicks off by talking about how a series of groups that purported to be "free market" think tanks have, over the past few years, tried to become active in debates over copyright and patent law, often promoting stronger IP laws -- which seems a bit odd for supposedly "free market" operations, since intellectual property is a government-granted monopoly on an abundant resource -- or the very antithesis of a free market ideal. What Lee noted, is that these newer groups weren't really intellectually honest "think tanks," but rather were operations funded by certain business interests, set up to look like independent think tanks, and then trying to ride on the good reputation of the think tanks out there who are intellectually honest...


We have already written about Microsoft's (mis)use of so-called "think tanks". Even days ago we saw somewhat of an upcoming example. Basically, people in the IT sector must always remember that Microsoft admits stuffing panels [PDF] and even bribing to get its way. It's all part of entryism at large. There is nothing too far fetched about it as it's done in many other fields by other companies too (Monsanto for example).

To give just one example, consider the Yahoo hijack and watch this new infographic of Yahoo. In particular, it is worth seeing how Microsoft's arrival at the scene destroyed the company and made it Microsoft's vassal. It helps show just how destructive Microsoft can be inside in the industry, ruining and breaking things (eliminating rivals) rather than creating new things (actual productivity).

To give a more recent example of apparent entryism, see this recent story about the W3C. Apple and Microsoft both have too much power in there and it causes problems on the Web. A few days ago we found this Microsoft and Apple apologist bashing web standards and defending proprietary extensions like Microsoft's and Apple's. Quoting just a portion:

Another of the trends underlying the supposed death of the web is the shift from web standards to proprietary languages for developing networked applications. This is exemplified by the iPhone app ecosystem, which is inhabited largely by apps that could be websites but have been implemented instead using Apple’s Cocoa Touch API. I touched on most of the justifications for taking this approach in my previous post. Basically, it was the shortest path for Apple to get to where they wanted to be in terms of features and tools. Conspiracy theorists might claim that they also wanted to maximize lock-in by making it harder to port apps to other platforms, doubtless citing Apple’s decision to ban third-party development environments for iOS. There’s probably some truth to that as well, despite the fact that they ended up relaxing these restrictions.


Some people have been trying to give credit to Apple for Flash abolishment, but almost no company restricts cross-platform portability as much as Apple. It totally ignores all the Free operating systems (with Free software at their core) for sure, based on the fact that Apple ignores their existence. The GPL too is still disliked or dishonoured by Apple. When the W3C tells us that MPEG-LA patents have room in HTML5-compliant documents, one must remember the note about "fake authority". Given what the W3C does to ISO at the moment we have plenty of reasons to just label the W3C a compromised (as in hijacked) 'think tank'. We warned about it when Novell's Jaffe was appointed as its head. Jaffe's history, which includes the Novell-Microsoft patent deal he co-architected, speaks for itself.

Techrights believed that it's time for Berners-Lee to come back to steering/heading the W3C and restoring sanity to it. Berners-Lee, a longtime follower of figures like Richard Stallman, has left his 'baby' in the hands of the very same people whose work is antithetical to Stallman's. For instance, all the chairs at the W3C are occupied by companies whose policy is pro software patents, which Berners-Lee called "a terrible thing" at the end of last year.

Tim Berners-Lee
Image from Wikimedia

Recent Techrights' Posts

Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025