Please let webstandards be freely implementable by ALL

I can't really say that I have any new arguments to add to this discussion,
but I still want to express my opinion on the matter.

To continue to enhance the web-experience and strengthen the power of the
web we need to make sure that the standards used by the web get widely
accessible for end-users. To make sure that this happens standards needs to
be widely implemented, the wider the better.

If there is even a small change to implement a standard this will be a big
obstacle for many implementers. Even the fact that a standard *may* be
charged for in the future will make implementers think twice before
implementing such a standard since it might be lost time if they have to
remove that implementation later. Looking at the implementers of Candidate
Recommendations so far you see that it's often, if not mostly, done by
smaller implementers. It would most likely slow down development of
standards if these implementers would have to pay patent fees (even in the
future).

And I don't think the solution "make everything free for open source
software" is the right way to go either. W3C standards should be freely
implemented by *anyone*, no matter what religion.

I see use for there being formats out there that contains patented
technologies, but why does W3C have to push for such formats?

Thanks for listening,
Jonas Sicking

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 21:03:08 UTC