- From: Dan Kegel <dank@kegel.com>
- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:14:15 -0800
- To: coriordan@compsoc.com
- Cc: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
coriordan@compsoc.com wrote: > Your draft policy only requires patents to be > made available royalty-free for a specified > "field of use". This can create a situation whereby > I may use your standards in only one area of computer > science thus restricting my freedom to write software. > > The software (and documentation) that I write is > released as Free Software (under the GNU GPL). My > hope is create software that everyone can use for > any purpose be they wealthy or not. > > In order to write Free Software I must avoid the > use of patent restricted technologies. To allow > me, and the thousands (or millions?) of Free > Software programmers to continue writing software > that makes use of the best technologies, please > consider ammending the draft to require all > patents to be royalty-free without restriction. Hi Ciaron, I suspect this is one of the compromises that allowed the royalty free policy to pass. The fact that neither side is completely happy with the compromise is perversely a good sign that perhaps it was a fair deal. Although I am also a staunch advocate of Free Software, I support the W3C's draft patent policy because I am also a pragmatist. The compromise is acceptable to me. Cheers, Dan Kegel http://www.kegel.com
Received on Monday, 25 November 2002 21:51:03 UTC