Hi, sorry, I hadn't seen that this was also posted publicly.
On Jun 29, 2009, at 20:23 , Arthur Barstow wrote:
The current Widgets-update Specification http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets-updates/ contains in 12.3 a description on how a widget could update itself by a javascript calling the widget.update() method I wanted to know how important this feature is to the group and how likely it will be that it will find widespread use. The goal is to assess whether it is worthwhile to circumvent the patent also for this self-update feature, which will be a little bit harder than the circumvention for the rest of the Specification.
My personal and non-legal opinion on this topic is that that feature simply does not exist.
It is mentioned in an example which by definition is not normative (section 1 Conformance further notes "Everything in this specification is normative except for diagrams, examples, notes and sections marked as informative" and the section itself starts with "This section is informative.") It is not defined by Widget Updates and it is not defined by Widget APIs and Events.
Furthermore my understanding is that this is the only part of the specification that could possibly infringe Apple's patent, which means that the specification in fact doesn't since that feature is not a part of it (or any other).
We can more than very easily drop the example, and in fact the entire section since it is entirely incorrect.
-- Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ Feel like hiring me? Go to http://robineko.com/
