Widgets, W3C and Wallies

Widgets are little web applications run on the client side. They’re not particularly new and there are a lot of them about, but there’s little consistency between them, so they’re a bit of a pain to use in practice still.

The good news is that W3C have published Widget Packaging and Configuration W3C Candidate Recommendation which should help to encourage consistency.

The bad news is that Apple has made patent claims about the Widgets 1.0: Access Requests Policy First Public Working Draft. A Patent Advisory Group has been set up, which means that Apple’s patents have probably delayed that part of widget standardisation to at least next February.

You may remember that Apple also patent-bombed the Widgets Updates work earlier this year and work has only just resumed after the patent detour.

Two things come to mind:

  1. Why are Apple being the new World Wide Wallies?
  2. Can someone see how to total up the delays to W3C work caused by patents? That might be useful for anti-patent campaigns.
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