response to your proposal

I respond to this article in linuxtoday:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-30-001-20-NW-CY

as follows...


On 16 August 2001 the W3C made public a proposal to substantially change
their patent policy framework. Amongst the changes is support for a new
licensing model (called RAND) that legitimises the W3C's role in developing
and promoting standards that could require the payment of royalties.

This is a substantial shift in the philosophical direction of the W3C and
should be of extreme concern to anyone who values being able to implement
W3C standards in a royalty-free manner. In particular this has profound
implications for the support and implementation of future W3C standards by
the free software community. It is likely to extinguish free software
development and deployment in the areas where the payment of royalties is
required.

The last call review period closes on 30 September 2001 (two days from the
time I am writing this abstract). The W3C is aware of the importance of this
issue and states "As the policy has ramifications on the Web community at
large, and as the Web Community have consistently helped W3C in its efforts,
views from this diverse community are essential."[1] However, as evidence of
how well this issue has been publicised, only two relevant public comments
have been made to the W3C archive to date. It is a matter of urgency that
you make your views known. A final policy is expected from the W3C by
February 2002.


The W3C has had success in most part because up till now it supported the
open source community. if you change that, you will be hurting yourself more
then us...

Take for example Apache, apparently on 60% of the webs servers, apache that
won't adopt your standards if you charge them for it, (and they can't as it
won't be free software anymore if they have to pay royalties to you.

Thats only one example, I am sure there are many more, I just wanted to
voice my opinion on this in the hope that good sense prevails.

You guys up till now have been the good guys standardizing the industry,
another Microsoft (tm) we don't need.

I would hate to see you replaced by a consortium that chooses a more
community spirit.


kindest regards

Frank Hauptle
Perth
Western Australia


Frank Hauptle

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:53:27 UTC