- From: Danny Goodman <dannyg@dannyg.com>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 12:47:20 -0700
- To: <www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org>
Developers on the front lines -- the ones who establish the strategies and write the code for Web-based content and appliations -- look to the W3C as a bright beacon of safety shining through the fog of proprietary roadblocks. Adoption of a patent policy that allows for required royalty payments may snuff out that light, setting us all adrift. I believe that the policy puts at great risk the way the W3C is perceived by the hundreds of thousands of individual developers around the world. At best, working groups and recommendations will be balkanized into RF and RAND subgroups, the latter shunned by those who could otherwise apply the recommendations to promote the Web as a "truly universal information space" (words from the W3C mission statement). At worst, the organization as a whole will be cheapened by the perception that the patented tail is wagging what had been a freedom-loving dog. Danny Goodman http://www.dannyg.com
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 15:47:26 UTC