This is a bad policy

To whom it may concern.

The Patent Policy deadline for comments must be extended!  Such a vital
topic has been pushed under the radar and will be progressed without due
public involvement and comment.  After the recent events in the US, the web
community has woken up to a deadline less than 24 hours away.  This is not
acceptable and must be rectified.

The issue is NOT simply one of including the patent status of a draft, the
W3C's role is to marshal open standards.  There should be no compromise.  By
introducing this policy the W3C abdicates it's role entirely and shows
disrespect for the web community.

This issue is extremely important.  Microsoft and a handful of other
companies are hell bent of removing the freedom of software through GPL and
this is an important step towards doing just that.

This is not the role of the W3C.  Semantic web, XML Protocol and XHTML
2/basic/modularization must be supported by the W3C and .NET should not be
supported.

W3C based open standards are the important thing here.

Sincerely,
Mark.

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 19:33:43 UTC