the promotion of fee base standards.

W3C
    If you accept your current RAND policy to promote fee based standards for the world wide web then will be betraying your mandate "to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding".  This will make commerce, in particular the exploitation of the world wide web by multinational corporations, the only result, while restricting the potential of the web as a free global forum for information, communication and collective understanding.  If you do not require royalty free licenses for all web standards then you do so at your peril, and your group and its decision will be remembered with scorn.  You are the stewards and guardians of the world wide web and have a responsibility to guard its liberty and accessibility for all its users, no group of people should be able to restrict anyone from integrating their work and potential into the web which you risk doing.   You break this trust at your peril, if you do you may one day find yourselves irrelevant, and pushed aside, as usurpers of the real promise of the web to promote universal communication, sharing and understanding.   
            A.O. 
            Software Developer
            Calgary, Alberta, Canada