- From: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@fsf.org>
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 16:19:21 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- Message-ID: <20011010161921.C10396@ebb.org>
Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group: I am concerned about your Patent Policy Framework draft. This draft could allow some W3C members to charge royalty fees for technologies that are included in standards for the WWW. I write now to state my objection to the inclusion of a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" (RAND) licensing option in the proposed policy. It's actually a misnomer to call such licensing options "non-discriminatory"! Technology licensed under RAND will likely be off limits to developers of Free Software (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html), because we have no way to count or even find everyone who receives a copy of software that we write. It discriminates against those who wish to implement your RAND-controlled standards in Free Software. I am happy that the W3C has been friendly to Free Software developers in the past---even releasing some Free Software reference implementations for us to use. Please continue this tradition with patent licensing, by revising your draft to require that all patents held on technology be licensed in a way that grants royalty-free, world-wide, non-exclusive use in Free Software---particularly in Free Software licensed under the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). Sincerely, Bradley M. Kuhn Vice President, Free Software Foundation -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Vice President Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942 59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652 Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org
Received on Thursday, 11 October 2001 07:29:06 UTC