Re: [www-vrml] Tim BL Is Baffled, Too

[Alan Hudson <giles@yumetech.com>]

Miriam English wrote:

> > Recently? It's been wide open to anybody with $100US for four or five 
> > years
> > now.
>
>
> That is what I mean about closed doors. Who has US$100 to spare? I 
> certainly don't. I live way below the poverty line. And if I have little 
> money imagine how the average student manages.
>
> There is a temptation these days to consider people who don't have money 
> to be not worth considering, but that is a short-sighted view. If 
> VRML/X3D is not to go (more) stale it needs constant infusion of new 
> blood. Barriers to that work against it. And nobody knows where the next 
> round of brilliant ideas will come from to revolutionise 3d. I may be 
> money-poor, but I am information-rich and this is the case with 
> increasing numbers of people now.
As Neil commented, the consortium makes no money off professional 
members.  Typically we get $50, half off at all conferences or if you 
sneeze.  Consider webmaster time and accountant, web server trafic and 
it goes away quickly.  If we where all volunteer this might work, but 
we've tried that in the past.  Having a few semi-paid positions(nowhere 
near full-time) helps make things run smoother.

The main reason for having professional members is to insure the IP 
framework.  Ie if someone contributes ideas to the specification we have 
to have an agreement from them saying its ok to use it.  I've woken up 
at nights with nightmares that Xj3D will be the target of a patent 
lawsuit.  We do no-one a good thing if X3D ends up being unimplementable 
without patent licensing costs.

I pushed very hard for professional memberships as I felt it was the 
passion of the community which drove the VRML spec forward.  But some 
balance of corporate and community is required.  We are definately open 
to suggestions as to how to involve the community, but the fact remains 
that for the consortium to exist it must cover its expenses.

One key difference between VRML/X3D and other standards/open source 
projects is the ISO standardization.  There is no way to do this without 
editing fees, travel and a standards body to feed the work to ISO.  Neil 
and I go around about the values of this verses industry standards, but 
I feel this adds a fair bit to this process.  At the minimum its forced 
us to document X3D considerabily more then any other 3D format.  Look 
around at the obj, openflight, 3ds, shockwave, viewpoint any of these. 
None are as well documented as VRML or X3D.  I beleive this is a direct 
follow-on from the ISO rules and process.  W3C does as well but only 
after some serious learning curves.

--
Alan Hudson
President: Yumetech, Inc.                              www.yumetech.com/
Web3D Open Source Chair         www.web3d.org/x3d/workgroups/source.html
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