Absurd standards

Dear Sirs,

As I have understood the W3C consortium is seriously discussing allowing
non royalty free patents on standards developed by the consortium.

Patenting standards sounds like a contradiction and when I first
heard about this related to the W3C I thought it was a joke, an
ironical comment in the software patent debate.

Now it's clear that this was not a joke and then it's urgent to act and
stop this. Standards that are developed for all people have to be open,
anything else will have too many negative implications on the society
and the world.

Standards for the web have to be non propriatory as it otherwise
will create a lot of volunatary or non voluntary criminals and
possibly terrorism as well. Terrorism is always bad but ideas 
like allowing standards to be patented is even worse and will
promote cyber terrorism.

For all development within our own company we use open, royalty free
and well documented standards for information exchange.
For my own I would never use a "standard" which is patented by a
commercial organization. I would not allow myself to this,
alternatively I would not care if I had no choice (as e.g MP3),
and then implicitly become a "criminal", but not a voluntary criminal.

Standards which are not open and free are not standards and any attempt
to allow for this kind of social contradictions is unhealthy.

My view upon the W3C consortium so far has been very positive and
I have supported their standards. Now, if the W3C will allow for
standards which are not royalty free, then it's also the end of the
W3C as I see it and I will definitely not support the consortium
any longer.

        Sincerely Yours
        Roland Orre

------------------------+--------------------+---------------------
Roland Orre             | O---O---O Neural   | orre@neurologic.se
------------------------+  \ /|\ /| Network  | Wph: +46  8 446 3160
NeuroLogic              |   O-O-O-O Solutions|      +46  8  16 4560
Stockholmsv. 192        |   |/ \ /|          | Mob: +46 70 826 9748
S-187 36 TABY, Sweden   |   O---O-O          | Fax: +46  8 612 6717
------------------------+--------------------+---------------------

Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 01:01:12 UTC