Objection to W3C patent inclusion in standards

In regard to allowing non-disclosed patents to be included in W3C standards, I 
must whole-heartedly object.

The WWW has for many years relied upon the spread of best-technology through 
open standards which are not held hostage to any particular interest.  By 
allowing patent wars to enter now, the entire possibility of upholding that 
openness will vanish, replaced by by highest-bidder semantics in technical 
language.

This will especially hit the institutions which help promote and develop the 
web through non-commercial means, the .edu's, .org's, and .gov's and the 
people behind them.  By forcing any standard complient process to use these 
patents would essentially make the standard pointless, and these groups would 
not participate with nearly the vigor they have in the past.  Why would a 
group contribute efforts to a standard which they then would be forced to 
purchase licensing to merely improve it?

For many reasons, I don't believe software patents should have any part in the 
W3C standards, and would abandon the standard for something better and more 
open for any future development if they were to be included.

Sincerely,
Todd Stockert

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Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 11:54:11 UTC