Patent Policy from Paul Logston on 2001-10-01 (www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org from September 2001)

From: Paul Logston <plogston@home.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 19:51:31 -0500
To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Message-Id: <20011001005106.SZFM18897.femail29.sdc1.sfba.home.com@there>

I'm a web developer and a user of free (and non-free) software.

Allowing patented ideas into your standards is probably the worse idea for 
the Internet's health. What this will do is create a system of tollbooths for 
web development and basically prevent any free software from being developed 
to the new standards.

If I were a corporation, I'd surely want to be able to tax (through royalty 
payments) any web development. However, those corporation's gains are the 
community's losses.

The last time I checked, more than half of the web's servers ran on free 
software. Could this continue when development is buttoned up with a bunch of 
patents? I would think not.

So, in summary, I'm against the idea of allowing private patents into public 
standards.

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 20:51:14 UTC