- From: David Kaufman <david@gigawatt.com>
- Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 23:39:24 -0500
- To: Norbert Bollow <nb@cisto.com>, www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- Cc: rms@gnu.org, coreteam@dotgnu.org
Norbert Bollow <nb@cisto.com> wrote... > > Dear members of the W3C Patent Policy Working Group, > > when I read in the press release [...] "W3C Patent License > Requirements Consistent with Open Source/Free Software Terms" [...] > I thought that the issue ...had been resolved in the new draft. > > This is unfortunately not true. The new draft policy still allows > the creation of W3C standards which are impossible to implement in > GPL-compatible Free Software. thank you for clearly making the position of the Free Software Foundation a matter of record, once again. sadly it appears that the W3C may still not "get it". but i'll take a stab at it too, though, just so i can say i tried, (and tried): W3C, hear this: making a "patent policy" with the words "royalty free" in the name, and claiming it is "consistent" with Free Software, while not *making* it, like Free Software licenses do, legally protect the legal freedom of everyone (here, meaning specifically: "everyone") to exercise and enjoy their legal right to use it any way they see fit (with those "any ways" including distributing it (to anyone (or even everyone) else)), even with wild and ill-advised abandon, and even after modifying it to suit any old purpose they can think of, ("they" here again also meaning absolutely anyone) completely without restriction or obligation of any kind... without making it such that they are *all* legally protected from those who would attempt to legally restrict, remove, revoke or reduce any of these simple freedoms, in short (hahhah), without making it irrevocably and permanently guaranteed to be Actually Free to Everyone for Ever... (drum roll here...) is like advertising, like shouting: "Free country, here! Come one, come all! Send huddled masses!" and then not allowing free speech in that country, or making the "free" part a limited-time-only, introductory special, to be replaced shortly with lists of forbidden thought, slavery to license owners, registration of all unlicensed ideas, and, oh yeah patented innovation. "Do you want to think? Do you have a license for that idea? Did you know your actions were based on previously patented practices? Have you paid your thinker's license and registration fees, your mandatory minimum idea insurance? has that innovation been inspected this year?" it's like saying you're going to open up a free soup kitchen to feed anyone who wants soup, asking people to volunteer to help, and to contribute to your "cause", and then selling the soup. eventually word will get out that your brand of freedom is in fact really something Less Than Free and, gosh darn them, historically wherever people have been faced with a choice between "Really Free" and "Free But With Hidden Shackles And Loopholes Included At No Extra Cost", there has been a slight tendency for them to choose to use the Really Free, in overwhelming numbers, over the Free With Shackles and Loopholes. even attempts to replace shackles with chains *disguised* as merely strings have been ferreted out. Free Trials disguised as Free Software were soon exposed as either Not Quite Free, Not Too Free, Not Free For Long, or Truly Free But Only Of Freedom. Shared But Not-Free Almost Open Source has been revealed as merely a Glass House... anything less than 100% pure free, (and i don't mean just "made *with* 100% pure Free", i mean Legally Freed) just doesn't smell right to the discerning consumer, and for no explicable reason, the Actually Free solution is the one that gets adopted. go figure. it's as if people just instinctively can feel in their gut the difference between the line "here, it's free. use it. share it. enjoy it." and the line: "give me your money you small insignificant unwilling future customer. resistance is futile." we pesky humans do tend to read between the lines, despite the finely polished and carefully crafted obfuscation of a Press Release. it is ironic that the WWW Consortium's intellectual property policy is now poised to specifically and categorically exclude an entire class of the best quality of software in the world from implementing it's standards. it's even more ironic is that the World Wide Web itself, (and only to a lesser degree, the Consortium) owes it's very existence to this particular class of software, namely Free Software (and to a lesser degree, other open source software). the epitome of irony is that this comes, as a direct result of pressure placed on the W3C organization by corporations which have large financial stakes in owning and controlling standards, in trying to make intellect their legal property, and deny it to those without the funds to license, rent, buy or otherwise *pay* the corporation for the privilege of daring to think or act upon a thought to which they have laid legal claim. it's so ironic because without these corporations lobbying legislators to create, and without them paying their lawyers to protect, extend, and enforce their notion of ownership of ideas, the Free Software Foundation would never have been able to use those very enforceable and very legal concepts to empower an author to make his work totally and legally free --free of licenses, restrictions, royalties and rules. free to be used by any person for any purpose their own freedom of thought can conjure. these freedoms that only come with Free Software are guaranteed by the very same ironclad laws which guarantee corporations all their rights of ownership, their rights to forbid copying, to restrict distribution to licensed dealers, and to restrict even the amount of *time* during which you may potentially enjoy the few limited rights they let you borrow, with respect to "their" intellect that is their "property". those very same corporate interests that have now successfully lobbied lawmakers to actually outlaw that certain specific *knowledge* of *how* one *might* theoretically open the flimsy locks they place around their property, without their key, those very same interests whose insatiable greedy profiteering was the exact *cause* of the entire Free Software Movement, now pressure the W3C to become a thin front company for their agenda. we are not impressed, except perhaps with the irony. i submit that as corporations further their attempts to lay siege to our minds, to attempt to take and hold ground in and around our innovations, and to conquer and occupy the lands of our ideas for the sole purpose of licensing back to us the right to act upon those ideas, they will only further the cause of Free Software, which is nothing more than freedom of thought and they'll highlight even more the folly of thinking that intellectual property can ultimately be anything more than a really quite amusing oxymoron. the web exists today because every human who tried it, saw that it's ultimate and irresistible value was as the most powerful medium for *sharing* ideas that has ever existed. nearly unlimited mass reproduction of human ideas, in the form of ordered ones and zeroes can, with computers, be reproduced at a cost now fast approaching zero and, with the internet, that product can now also be distributed nearly instantly and worldwide effortlessly. it's not a superhighway we use to "go somewhere today", it's a super-pipe we all increasingly drink from. and the nourishment we derive, the knowledge, the communication and especially the community, is not something that can be metered, measured, subscribed to, owned, licensed or billed for in monthly installments. all of these cancerous financial mechanisms obstruct the flow of information and Free Software is the organism that has evolved to bypass the obstruction, and heal the aggregate mind of the organism we call the human species. the W3C exists as a result of the widespread use of Free Software and Free standards on the internet, not the other way around. it can choose to honor it's genesis or turn it's back on it as it must. if is remains part of the solution, it will grow and flourish, and to the exact extent that it serves the human community in it's need for free flow of thought and idea, it will grow and flourish, as it has in the past. but of course, conversely, to the extent it begins to fall under the control and influence of corporations, to that exact extent that it contributes to the problem, it will suffer a loss of relevance, membership, become perhaps better funded but severely undernourished, and ultimately wither on the vine die. </opinion of="one man"> > Since the DotGNU project is committed to using the GNU GPL, this > means that whenever a W3C standard is patent-encumbered [...] we > would have to quickly create a competing standard and actively > lobby against widespread adoption of the [W3C] standard and this will be the reaction of every other Free Software project, developer and (eventually) user who uses, relies on, and derives benefit from Free Software as well. standards, being ideas, need to be freed. -dave -- David Kaufman <david@gigawatt.com> www.Gigawatt.com / Power Data Development \ www.ClickSQL.com Hosting Scriptage Databasics www.Power-Data.com 87 East 21st Street, Bayonne, NJ 07002 (201) 436-0668
Received on Thursday, 27 March 2003 23:39:30 UTC