Reject this proposal

It would be a terrible mistake to adopt the changes proposed in the W3C
Patent Policy Framework.
The world-wide-web and the environments created therefrom are ones of
freedom and openness.  It affords people incredible powers to communicate
with a vast number of others through an unhindered medium.  I have no
doubt that the powers of this medium are due to its free and open nature.
To include proprietary and fee-based components in a widely used
standard will obviously lead to problems.  One has only to do a little bit
of research to discover how mistakes like these were made in the past.
What UNISYS did with the GIF standard was a very stupid and greedy
decision.  Now it is no longer a standard.

Once you let corporations pull this kind of stunt, they will pursue it to 
terrible ends.  The RAMBUS scandal is an example which easily comes to
mind.

I strongly urge the W3C to reject this proposal and all others like it,
and I applaud those who have spoken-out against it.


Aden Seaman