BofA+Netscape

[Eric Hughes]

How many times will there remain the confusion between what is
achievably optimal and what is permitted?

   From: jamesd at netcom.com (James A. Donald)

   Now plainly they should listen very carefully to what the guys
   at CERN say about SGML tags, but as far as I can see, the groups that
   you want them to take consensus with, have no standing in this matter.

This is all very Libertarianly Correct, certainly, but it may also be
downright stupid.

If one WWW company manages to fragment the web, the total value
available to all drops, and it may also be that individual value is
also less.  Communications technologies have use-value superlinear in
the number of people using compatible systems, so fragmentation always
reduces total value.  Whether the individual fragmented value is
greater or larger than an individual non-fragmented value I cannot
say.  I do know that free software has this tendency to be easily
replaceable.

Eric