- From: Mike Baptiste <mike.baptiste@duke.edu>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 19:29:27 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I won't delve into my shock at seeing how this was kept under wraps until just a day or two ago. Plenty of people have expressed their disgust. I understand software companies need to make money. However, using patents to extort licesning fees after standards have been accepted and widely deployed is deplorable. The W3C should NOT be using Rambus as a role model. Software companies shoudl make money by coming up with software people WANT to use and be up front about patent applications so people KNWO they may be lockign themselves into a proprietary format. As an IT professional in academia, I worry what the impacts of the RAND licensing scheme would have in our universities. University budgets are tight. Many groups and researchers cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars on OS or other software licenses and thus look for an open source solution. Do we really want to hand the keys to the Internet to a few conglomerates? Do we want to put the open source community at risk of being marginalized because they cannot pay licenseing fees to include support for new standards? Do we really want to have an Internet where only a single browser will work reliably due to patented standards? The Internet grew out of the DOD and work by hundreds of universities. Internet2 is being driven by researches at universities. The open sharing of code and knowledge was vital to the growth of the Internet. Do we really think things will improve by allowing companies to jump up with a patent after a standard has been widely adopted demand huge fees? Imagine the disruption this will cause in academia. Sure, corporations will scream loudly but will pony up the cash to avoid the disruption. But many schools cannot do so - do we really want to disrupt our student education and research when we have to scramble to anotehr solution when a license issue arises? Do we really want to 'fork' the Internet? Do we really want to go back to the BITNET days? Imagine if you will an Internet that is constrained by patents. You can't browse the Internet unless you use software from one company or an 'association'. You can't browse without paying excessive fees for said browser. Academia won't be able to pay it - so they'll fork - create their own network based on non patented software to share information. But at what cost? Yes, large software companies have made huge contributions to the web, the Internet. etc. But so have researchers. Splitting those two apart because of patents is a dangerous prospect that will only hurt research and the advance of our connected life. I have always respected the W3C as a standards body committed to futhering technology. I truely believe that adopted standards need to be freely usable. Software companies that want to try and develop their own standard are free to do so, but should have to push its adoption on their own. The W3C does not need to help them. Please resconsider your decision to make such a drastic change in your charter. It flies in the face of all the time and effort developers have made to improve the Internet for humanity. Mike Baptiste -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mike Baptiste 202 Hudson Hall, Box 90271, Durham, NC 27708 Director of Information Technology mike.baptiste@duke.edu Pratt School of Engineering @ Duke University Phone:919-660-5404
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 19:29:28 UTC