comments RAND licensing

Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group:

I'm very critical about the recent Patent Policy Framework draft, which
could allow W3C members to charge royalty fees for technologies
included in web standards.

I especially object to the inclusion of a "reasonable and
non-discriminatory" (RAND) licensing option in the proposed policy. This 
  could lead Web that is not accessible by everyone as it should be.
The exclusive use of a "royalty-free" (RF) licensing
model is in the best interests of the Internet community,
RAND licensing, however, would always necessarily exclude some
would-be implementors, especially among open source and free
software developers.

Despite all the advances in Computers over the last decade, there are 
still many interoperabitliy problems. Many are greatly reduced by the 
open nature of the Web, which was open in great part to the W3C with its 
tradition of providing open-source
reference implementations and its work to promote a wide variety of
interoperable implementations of its open standards. The W3C can
best continue its work of "leading the Web to its full potential"
by continuing this tradition, and saying no to RAND licensing.



Sincerely,

Thorsten Manegold
Trier, Germany

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 06:00:50 UTC