- From: David Waite <mass@akuma.org>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:04:05 -0600
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Allowing patent fees and terms to be imposed on standards will mean the end of the W3C; it becomes a vehicle for corporations to standardize amongst themselves rather than an open standards body which allows outside implementors (including Free and Open software developers) to implement those standards. By the events I've seen (including practically no announcment, and executing on this new policy before it is even ratified), I doubt the 300+ dissenting messages in this forum at this time will sway the decision. Still, I would urge for more consideration, even though I doubt the people (or rather, large corporations) which could act on this will ever read this comment, or for that matter act on it if they did. Once you allow for fees to be imposed on standards (and even worse, openly allow for patent fees to come out of the woodwork after a standard is ratified), nobody will pay attention to W3 standards except the companies listed as authors of the document. Eventually they will realize that its much more efficient to just talk amongst themselves, and us outsiders won't even have the benefit of a standard which cannot be implemented. I think the rest of us will cope with the death of the W3C, but it is very disappointing that we will have to. -David Waite
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:50:04 UTC