- From: Noah Hafner <nmh@andrew.cmu.edu>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:19:13 -0400 (EDT)
- To: <www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org>
Hello, I have read about the current proposal for allowing "standards" that are covered by patents and wish to offer some commentary as a normal enduser. According to http://www.w3.org/Consortium/ W3C's long term goals for the Web are: 1 Universal Access: To make the Web accessible to all by promoting technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture, education, ability, material resources, and physical limitations of users on all continents; 2 Semantic Web : To develop a software environment that permits each user to make the best use of the resources available on the Web; 3 Web of Trust : To guide the Web's development with careful consideration for the novel legal, commercial, and social issues raised by this technology. Those sound like excellent goals and I am in favor of the w3c following them. The idea of patents seems to go in the opposite direction - there are many people who do not have the resources to pay the fees nor the time to figure out just which fees some patent holder wants. A few other points for your consideration: The Internet got where it is solely because it is based totally on open standards. I cannot predict what specifically the world wide web would become if it did become based on patents, but I cannot imagine it being any better than it is now (and probably a lot worse) While it may seem easier to just allow patented standards, I think that it would be much more sensible to base standards on non-patent encumbered technology, and develop truly open standards that everyone can use. thank you for your time, Noah Hafner
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 15:19:13 UTC