RAND licensing: bad proposal, insufficient consultation

As a computer scientist, I object to the W3C behavior and
the proposed new RAND licensing policy on the following points:

1) The public consultation was excessively discreet and too short.
    This in itself tends to discredit the W3C and is not acceptable.
    Now that the W3C intended new policy is being widely publicized
    on the Web, this consultation period has to be extended.

2) The W3C is a standard setting non-profit organization and is
    respected as such. Its new proposed patent policy and RAND
    licensing goes in my opinion completely in the opposite
    direction and is bound to quickly have the W3C appear as
    the puppet of large, patent-eager corporations. This would
    defeat the very purpose of fee-free standards and the
    essence of the W3C.

3) The proposed policy is going to strongly harm free standards,
    open software development and interoperability in the whole
    computing-related world. This is against the W3C official
    goals, and against the will of many in the World Wide Web
    community, including mine.

4) I would like to know how wide the consultation was inside
    the W3C itself, regarding to the proposed new patent policy.
    Knowing some of the representants at W3C, I find it hard to
    believe they would have approved it, had they been aware
    of it.

I strongly believe patent and fee-free licensing is necessary to
the development of the World Wide Web, it's infrastructure, and
communication between peoples.
As a consequence, I must say I do object to the proposed new RAND
licensing model as it is now.


Also note that I agree with Mr Alan Cox message ("W3C Patent
Policy: Bad for the W3C, bad for business, bad for users").


Regards,

	Olivier

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 19:11:03 UTC