RAND

To Whom it may concern

    It seems to me the W3C is about to embark on a Titanic-ish voyage if it (the W3C) pursues the RAND issue.  This issue smacks (loudly) of corporate greed.  
    The corporate based and biased W3C will successfully plunge the development community into a bottomless chasm from which the development community will never recover and will have no desires to do so.
    As the holder of three patents (mechanical) and have recently gone through the patent process for a fourth, I feel your (and the digital development community's) problem lies not in a way to collect royalty fee from users (Isn't that already done when we purchase software?) but in the way the Patent Office delivers a patent... With TOTAL misunderstanding and no comprehension of what that patent is or represents.
    I can see it now... "Microsoft's patented application adopted as a W3C standard... Pay Me Now.  Then here comes AOL-TimeWarner (is that what they're called now?) with a re-invented wheel... Pay Me Now"  Both do the same exact thing but take a different road to get there.  Both are W3C standards (You KNOW they will be...).  However, they are incomprehensibly incompatible with each other and the little guys have to figure out which road to take to get to point B... So much for real innovation.
    All in all... Sounds like a really good reason for a resurgence of Local Area Networks in the most literal sense.

John Reed