RAND licensing inappropriate for web technologies

To whom it may concern,

As an occasional contributor to the Mozilla browser project, a dabbler in
Resource Document Framework (RDF) technologies, an open-source developer
and a lover of the web in general, I am deeply disappointed by the apparent
collapse of the founding philosophies of the W3C, as evidenced by the
attempted legitimization of fee-based patents in the standards-making
process in the form of the RAND proposal.

Citing RAND as a solution to contention over technologies such as SVG and
XPointer is merely a smokescreen -- the equivalent of the W3C cutting off
its own head in order to clear its throat.

At this point in the discussion (and since I am required to compose this
note on extremely short notice, due to the underpublicized nature of this
call for comment), I have little more to add.  However, I would like to
call further attention to and express my support for arguments already made
in a number of other messages to www-patentpolicy-comment.  In particular:

Robert O'Callahan

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Sep/0460.html

Peter Kelly

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Sep/0342.html

Alan Cox

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Sep/0131.html

Thanks,

ct

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 17:03:01 UTC