- From: Dmitry Borodaenko <dborodaenko@optifacio.com>
- Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 20:44:09 +0300
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
There is only one option for W3C Patent Policy to become compatible with free software, and in particular with GPL (which is used in majority of free and open-source programs): Reject RAND patent-encumbered technologies in all W3C recommendations, without exception. As it was stated before on this list, GPL makes sure that software distributed under this license is not subject to any limitations beyond those imposed by GPL itself. Thus, even including special clause like "royalty-free for GPL implementation" is not enough (look at FSF vs. KDE and GPL vs. 4-clause BSD license debates if you want more information on GPL compatibility issues). The GPL wording, the whole history of Free Software movement, and comments from its luminaries on this list show that we are not going to adjust our position to patents, and there are good reasons for that. This means that W3C has to choose its side right now: Does W3C support software patents, or does it support free software? If W3C chooses the side of patents, Free Software community will be forced to establish and use alternate standards body with different patent policy. This inevitable standards fork will considerably slow down Web development: new W3C standards will rely on proprietary implementations, and free software will follow an independent set of standards, incompatible with W3C standards. Free software influence should not be underestimated: even if proprietary implementations don't lag behind in terms of quality, security and release availability, Web in its current form heavily depends on free software such as Apache, BSD, Linux, Mozilla, Perl, PHP etc. In addition, many small proprietary software vendors, who are likely to be hurt by RAND licensing as well, will also look for alternative to W3C. Thus, standards fork is lose-lose for everyone expect certain proprietary software vendors, who are uncomfortable both with Internet and free software anyway. Are you, all the W3C members, willing to sacrifice the role of open and (therefore) leading standards body, and to turn away majority of Web developers and researchers? I, as a PhD student at Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics in Minsk, do research in the area of Semantic Web. If new patent policy supporting RAND fees is adopted, I will seriously consider changing research subject, and will not use patent-encumbered W3C standards. If alternate Web standards body with free software compatible patent policy is created, I will use and develop their standards instead of competing standards of W3C. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dmitry Borodaenko | http://optifacio.com/ Belarus Unit Manager | 39 Platonova Street Optifacio Software Solutions, Inc. | 220071 Minsk Belarus -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 13:44:19 UTC