- From: Evelio Perez-Albuerne <thoth256@us.net>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 17:06:26 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Dear W3C: I strongly believe that the proposal to allow patented technologies to be included in W3C stadards is an extremely bad idea which should be resoundingly rejected. Reasons in summary format: 1) Would weaken W3C in relation to individual companies seeking 'capture' a standard 2) Would lead to rise of rival non-patent-encumbered standards and subsequent standards "war" 3) Would discourage innovation and widespread adoption of new technologies in the future 4) Would violate the W3C stated principles of vendor neutrality and consensus. 5) Would significantly discriminate against people in poorer countries, violating the W3C's stated goal of universal access to the Web. In more detail: 1) Would weaken W3C in relation to individual companies seeking 'capture' a standard Companies have used proprietary 'standard' to lock in customers and extract maximum revenue from them since the earliest days of commercial information technology. Absent strong countervailing demands from users/developers or (more recently) the presence of an open-source alternative, companies will try to add proprietary extensions to standards, with a goal of "capturing" the standard so that they, rather than a vendor-neutral organization defines the de facto standard that end users and developers actually use. Examples include the numerous proprietary HTML tags that Microsoft and Netscape introduced during the "browser wars" of the late 90's, and Microsoft's attempts to "embrace and extend" Java. Allowing patented technologies to be incorporated in standards would greatly strengthen the hand of the company that holds the patent at the expense of the standards organization. The company has substantial leverage in the form of the licensing terms with which to influence the future course of the standard. 2) Would lead to rise of rival non-patent-encumbered standards and subsequent standards "war" There exist a large number of developers (of whom I am one) who have serious doubts about the entire concept of IP as applied to standards and software. Most of the participants in the open- source movement are at least partially motivated by this philosophy, and this group has demonstrated its ability to pull off large software development efforts (e.g. Linux, Apache). Given this, it is inevitable that any W3C standard that was encumbered by a patent would quickly face a rival open standard that was not patent- encumbered, and there would be a large developer group ready to write the code to implement the rival standard. At the very least, this would lead to a period of confusion while the rival standards fought it out, and at worst, it could result in the permanent existance of incompatible standards. Since such a situation is the exact opposite of goals the W3C exists to promote, the organization must not adopt patent- encumbered standards. 3) Would discourage innovation and widespread adoption of new technologies in the future. Regardless of how 'reasonable' RAND terms are, they still will impose additional costs when people are deciding whether or not to use new standards. Fundamental economics (as well as common sense) dictates that this will result in slower adoption of new technologies and less experimentation among developers. Since most current Internet technologies started out as small projects pushed by individual or small groups of developers, allowing patent- encumbered standards will likely have a major impact on future innovation and the development of new Internet applications. 4) Would violate the W3C stated principles of vendor neutrality and consensus. The violation of vendor neutrality is obvious, since adoption of any patnet encumbered standard will favor the company or companies that hold the patent(s). It is clear from reading the message forums on which comments have been posted that opinion is running very strongly against the proposal. In fact, I was unable to find a single comment supporting the proposal. Adoption of the proposed change in the face of such overwhelming grass-roots opposition would clearly signal that the W3C was not about consensus, but had been captured by corporate interests. 5) Would significantly discriminate against people in poorer countries, violating the W3C's stated goal of universal access to the Web. Even RAND terms that individuals or companies in developed countries would find easy to pay for are very likely to be beyond the reach of individuals in poorer countries. The would violate the W3C's stated goal of universal access. I hope that the W3C can stay true to its stated goals and principles by rejecting the current proposal, and reaffirming that open standards must truly be open - free for all to use without being encumbered by patents or any other IP restriction. Regards, Evelio Perez-Albuerne evelio@ultradrive.com http://www.ultradrive.com
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 17:06:39 UTC