- From: Edward Avis <epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:30:14 +0100 (BST)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
If there is one thing to be learned from the success of TCP/IP, the Web, Internet mail and so on over the past couple of decades, it is that no standard is likely to succeed unless it has a free implementation. In fact I'd go so far as to say that free implementations are more important than the standards themselves. It is vital that any standard can be implemented as widely as possible with the minimum of hassle. 'Non-discriminatory' licensing is a complete misnomer in the case of software patents. Such schemes are discriminatory since they make it impossible for free (open source) software to implement the functionality which is encumbered. The idea of RAND licensing might make sense for physical goods, where there is an inherit marginal cost in each unit, but not for software. If the W3C starts producing standards which cannot be implemented without paying a tax to certain people who hold patents, then these standards and ultimately the W3C itself will become irrelvant. The Web's success and the W3C's success are built on standards which are freely implementable by all and which have reasonable free-software implementations. Please do not throw that away by getting caught up in the current fad for dubious, land-grab software patenting. A sensible requirement would be that any W3C standard should be implementable worldwide in freely distributable and modifiable code. In other words, please keep the status quo. (About me: I am a computer science undergraduate, I recently finished a six month industrial placement developing Web applications at ArsDigita so you could count me as a 'developer' also.) -- Ed Avis <epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk> Finger for PGP key
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 13:30:20 UTC