- From: Brent J. Nordquist <brent@nordist.net>
- Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 12:49:46 -0500 (CDT)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I am writing to express my disagreement with the W3C's proposal on "Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND)" licensing. I have been participating in the UseNet, Internet, Free and Open Software communities for nearly two decades now, and have been a strong supporter of open, unencumbered standards (including those promoted by the W3C such as HTTP, XHTML, and XML). I am greatly disturbed by the prospect of what RAND licensing would likely mean for the future of the standards process. I want to be clear about the part of the proposal with which I'm disagreeing. I fully agree that patent interests need to be clearly disclosed early in the standards process, so that potential standards adopters can judge the impacts. I would even consider another licensing choice (in addition to RF licensing) which allowed patent-encumbered technology to be adopted by a standard, so long as the patent holder granted an irrevocable, royalty-free license, in perpetuity, to all implementors of the standard. It is the addition of royalty-required licensing to the W3C process with which I strongly disagree. My biggest concern with this proposal is that RAND licensing is inherently incompatible with Free and Open Software development. Free and Open Software licenses are, by design, not structured to allow for royalty payments; thus there can be no Free or Open Software implementations of a standard licensed with RAND. The Free and Open Software movements have contributed an incredible amount of innovation and technical progress to the growth of the modern Internet, and will continue to do so in the future. Many commercial software development organizations see their profit stream threatened by what Free and Open software developers are creating collaboratively around the globe, and I'm sure they're delighted with the prospect of having this threat diminished. However, this outcome would not serve the public interest, which I feel should be a high concern for an organization with "world-wide" in its name. I am not a free software absolutist; I definitely believe there is a place for both free and commercial implementation of software. But I also firmly believe that open, unencumbered standards provide the means by which this playing field is kept fair and level. The W3C's RAND proposal shifts the balance dangerously toward commercial software development (and especially toward the richest corporations). This undercuts the long tradition of technological innovation that the Free and Open Software movements have provided. It threatens to turn the Internet into a proprietary, commercial-only space, the form of which would be shaped mostly by a few rich players. Last semester I taught an undergraduate communication and networking class at the college where I work. An examination of the history of networking and the Internet makes one trend very clear: that protocols and data formats founded in open, unencumbered standards have flourished and endured over decades, while proprietary and patented approaches (while they may spring up and be popular at first) ultimately decay and vanish. (The contrast of TCP/IP with NetBEUI, IPX, and AppleTalk is the most striking example of this truth in the networking sphere.) The W3C has an opportunity here to make a stand for the value of open, unencumbered standards. Your organization should know as well as anyone the value that such standards have brought in the past. Don't ruin a laudable goal of requiring patent disclosure by adding RAND licensing which would diminish the vast contributions of the Free and Open Source movements, and in so doing, bolster commercial ventures which have financial gain, and not the public interest, as their ultimate goal. P.S. Don't forget that the advancement of open, unencumbered standards will go on with or without the W3C. If RAND licensing is added to the W3C process, history may well end up showing that the largest effect was the diminishing of W3C's role in shaping the world's future computing infrastructure. -- Brent J. Nordquist <brent@nordist.net> N0BJN
Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 13:49:47 UTC