- From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 23:51:42 -0600 (MDT)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
If the World-Wide Web is indeed to remain "world-wide", it must not depend on restricted standards. The W3C cannot prevent others from developing or using restricted standards, but it should not lend its name to them. Therefore, the W3C should adopt a policy that all important standards must have free patent licenses (and thus allow free software). Perhaps there are some standards for specialized kinds of business-to-business communication which are sufficiently unimportant that it may not be disastrous if they are patented. These standards do not really deserve the term "world-wide", but they may still be worth the W3C's attention. But standards that really are of world-wide importance must be free. The "back-door RAND" problem pointed out by Adam Warner is especially crucial. When the W3C decides that a certain standard ought to be patent-free, no circumstances should be allowed to annul that decision. Aside from these substantive changes in policy, the W3C should also stop using the term "reasonable and non-discriminatory", because that term white-washes a class of licenses that are normally neither reasonable nor non-discriminatory. It is true that they do not discriminate against any specific person, but they do discriminate against the free software community, and that makes them unreasonable. I suggest the term "uniform fee only", or UFO for short, as a replacement for "reasonable and non-discriminatory".
Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 01:51:45 UTC