May you please consider revising your draft?

Dear W3C Patent Policy Group,

I felt concerned about the recent Patent Policy Framework draft, for which 
some calls were published in order to make you modify your draft. And, like 
some great men & women have already done, I will demand you to revise this 
draft, for these reasons:

As far as I know, the W3C aims at providing the Internet with trustee and 
powerful standards. To make a norm to become a standard, you know that some 
conditions are required: a small or null license fee is one; the quality 
and accessibility of this norm is another one; sometimes, the personnality 
of the norm author is very important.

So let's point out why the W3C standards ARE effectively standards.

The W3C has provided his norms free of charge for a long time. And, AFAIK, 
it will go on. And that is good.

The W3C has worked with corporations in the building of some norms, and 
that made them popular standards. And that is still very good.

That all makes W3C one of the most important organisations of today, and 
that give you, W3C members, a great authority in making ANY standard for 
the Internet, either private or publicly available.

But be carefull. The RAND clause opens "a back door", not only in the 
future appliances of the standards (that might be protected by a non-free 
license, who make some evolution potentially dangerous), but in your 
authority TOO.

As a non-professionnal webmaster, as an internet user, as a web author, I 
have always been respectful for your work. I try to make my pages as close 
to your recommandations as possible. I try to make them available for the 
disabled persons, because the W3C pointed out that we can not, ethically, 
make the web available for only a part of the humanity.

But, if tomorrow some important standard was going to be under the power of 
a corporate and not under the power of a public organisation, by the guilt 
of the W3C, I would lose a great part of my admiration for you: because it 
would mean that you are not any more a great organisation, but the toy of 
corporations, that would have built a commercial position through your 
authority. And I guess that I would not be alone to be disappointed by such 
a case.

I understand that some standard must be commercial. It is a good thing that 
the one that invested to produce income get his income. And the inventivity 
must be rewarded. So the RAND clause, in itself, is not bad. But it surely 
will come to contaminate any work in progress at the W3C, if there are not 
VERY restrictive conditions to his utilisation.

I don't agree to a commercial licensing of public vital standards. They ar 
not to be sold: they belong to the nature of the Internet, not to his 
superstructures.

That is why I demand you to consider revising your draft by deleting all 
the reference to RAND, or by managing it so that it will NEVER menace the 
freedom of the web that you made so powerful. Because you are the dwell of 
all what web is, and because the web is not to be SOLD, but only to be USED.

I thank you to have read me, and I apologize for my froggy english.

G.-Joachim L. Dubuquoy-Portois
2, allée Joseph Lakanal
92000 Nanterre
FRANCE

 
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Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 09:25:54 UTC