patent policy

Dir Madams and Sirs,

I would like to express my concern about the proposed change of the W3C
patent policy. I don't see how accepting propietary protocols as
recommended standard will solve patent related problems in a manner that
benefits the majority of web content creators and users.
In contrast I believe that the current draft carries the risk of a web
in which a great part of information exchange will only be possible using
licensed protocols (How, in your draft, you define 'core Web
infrastructure ? TCP/IP ? HTML ? ) Where are the limits of propietary
protocols set ? I feel that RAND licensing (if at all) should only be
possible for a small number of applications. I don't believe that this
fraction should be released as an recommendation of an internet standard.

Why would you like to sacrifice the current RF-policy, which benefited the
economy and all users so much, in the name of a few trying to own what
they couldn't until now ?
Where is the prove that the new policy will better fulfill the aims of W3C
than the older one ?

At last I would like to state that the form of virtual non-publication of
this draft until now makes me think that public discussion was the
least you wanted. 

I ask you to reconsider the policy change and continue the RF-practice of
standard recommendations and leave RAND-implementations to somebody else.

Sincerely,

Hilmar Berger

Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 16:24:24 UTC