Keeping Web Services Royalty-Free
Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium, opened The Open Group Conference here on Monday by asking his colleagues to preserve the universality and openness of the Web as they build Web services as the foundation for the future of the Internet. And, said Berners-Lee, a key to preserving openness on the Web is to keep standard Web protocols patent and royalty-free.

"Remember that the ways to use Web services will not only be wide, but will be the base for all kinds of things people will build for the Web in the future," Berners-Lee said. "We have to be generic in design because Web services, if done well, will be flexible and apply to everything from mainframes to cell phones."

Berners-Lee, who is widely regarded as the father of the World Wide Web, emphasized that Web services have the power to change the world and, as such, need to be developed with interoperability in mind. "There is a common good in making an interoperable specification," he said. "The whole explosion of the Web would not have happened if it had not been open and completely patent and royalty free."
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