[x3d-public] Do Technocrats Know? - Was: WARNING! STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD

[Christoph Valentin]

>>>> So how do we put all of it together? Does the whole world need to go open standard and open source? What about the economics of it all? Where do we draw the line(s)?
 
I do not want to add much to your statement, however may I add my two cents about openness?

I think there's no need to discuss the openness of the X3D standard per se. The openness and the stability of the X3D standard are the foundation for re-usability and inter-operability of X3D models and X3D scenes. No doubt there, imho.

On the other hand, I am not sure if an open source approach fits for all business cases of authoring. I mean the creation of intriguing models and scenes needs a lot of effort, at least it needs tools that are not for free (in many cases). While this may change in some future, I think for the time being authors should be supported by the standard, who like to restrict the usage of their models by some standardized mechanism.


Let me explain it in my own words: when I was working on my experimental SrrTrains project, I established 10 "Master Rules", the tenth of which is about enforcement of copyright. While the project is "hibernating" now, the rules are still valid:

   x) Master Concepts (the "10 Commandments for SrrTrains" :-)

      The concept SrrTrains is built by only a few "master concepts", everything
      within SrrTrains is derived from these master concepts:

      - build multiplayer virtual model railroads based on VRML/X3D
      - make it an open concept where many people can contribute their ideas and sweat
      - use open source software as far as useful and possible
      - players can attain so-called "roles" (engineer, shunter, ...)
      - players can communicate during the game (chat, voice-chat, ...)
      - a layout and its models can be influenced by a command line interface
      - authors can (easily) build models of rail vehicles
      - authors can (easily) build models of houses and other static models
      - layouts are built by modules (from different authors)
      - mechanisms exist to restrict usage of your models and modules


All the best
Christoph