- From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee@rahul.net>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 14:48:02 -0400 (EDT)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I'm writing to express my utmost opposition to this change. Allowing patented standards would kill off free software. A fee which is "reasonable and non-discriminatory" for a company would be unaffordable for a free software developer working by himself or with other free software developers, who writes software that is given away without cost. Even if that problem were surmounted somehow, it would still be impossible to write free software that implements patented standards because free software may be copied and modified an unlimited number of times; any 'standard' which charged a fee based upon the number of copies would be unusable. The only reasonable fee for a standard is zero.
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:52:20 UTC