Does W3C yearn for the bad old days...?

Seems to me that to go through with this policy change would be a step
back to the bad old days of limited interoperability between systems and
software. Especially it would be a very effective blow to free software,
limiting the full potential of the W3C sanctioned standards to
proprietary software users. This would necessarily alienate free
software people and probably cause competing, truly open standards to
form - _hopefully_, if not probably, making the competing, proprietary
W3C standards obsolete before they do much damage. (The GIF issue sadly
hasn't been too encouraging on this point...)

I shan't make a more elaborate argument against it to get this sent in
time, but I felt I had to voice my objection; in any case, a quick look
in the archives showed that many more people have already spoken what
I'd have to say in more detail, so the arguments have been presented.

-- 
Mikko Rauhala - mjr@iki.fi - <URL:http://www.iki.fi/mjr/>