The Burden of Proof

Hi all,

Having read through:

http://www.w3.org/2001/10/patent-response

"The draft policy does attempt to answer this question: In a world where
patents exist and may be used to constrain conformance to standards, how
should W3C best proceed in order to accomplish its mission? Even if a
patent holder claims that a patent is relevant to a W3C Recommendation
and that party offers a license, this does not mean that W3C (or anyone
else) shares the belief that the claim is valid, or that an implementer
has infringed upon it."

Thanks for asking and answering the wrong question.

In this respect what I originally wrote still stands:

"What isn't clear is that the appropriate response is for the W3C to
condone RAND licensing terms and to actively promote non-free licenses."

What I meant by that is obvious: If the W3C agrees to a Recommendation
that includes RAND fees/restrictions and the official W3C logo/body is
used to promote that Recommendation it can't help but promote those
non-free licensing terms as well (for incorporation into our future
WWW).

What we need from the W3C are some well reasoned examples for why RAND
licensing terms are necessary for the future functioning of the W3C and
for the BENEFIT OF THE WWW (that's the overriding criterion of everyone
here after all). So we can all nod our heads and go "Yeah, that makes
sense."

The burden of proof is on the W3C. If they can't come up with well
argued reasons for why RAND licensing (in addition to RF licensing) will
benefit the future development of the WWW then I'll just take RF
licensing, thank you.

Then we will have concrete examples to discuss the merits of.

Regards,
Adam Warner

PS: The well-reasoned examples have to be better than "Look, they do it
therefore so should we".

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 00:49:04 UTC