- From: Andrew Tridgell <tridge@samba.org>
- Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 17:38:38 -0700 (PDT)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Dear W3C, I write as a user of web technology and as the developer of a number of web-based free software utilities. I strongly oppose the introduction of the RAND concept in standards. As has been shown many times in the past, what is considered "reasonable and non-discriminatory" to one group of people is often well beyond the means of other groups. The requirement of even a very small fee in order to implement, deploy or distribute an essential piece of a web standard would seriously impact on the continued development of the freely available implementations of web software and would also seriously undermine the role of poorer nations and groups in the further development of the web. While I could imagine a situation where commercial interests provide some relief from these fees for high profile free software projects such as Apache, I am very much afraid that any RAND style fees could kill the development of the multitude of smaller free software projects that provide essential diversity and fill important niche roles in the web infrastructure. For example, I am the author of two small special purpose web servers "JitterBug" and "SWAT" that provide web services for specialist applications within the free software community. While these projects aren't nearly as important in terms of market share as projects like Apache they do play an important role within their niche. Right now they are minimalistic implementations that just implement what is needed to inter-operate with current browsers, but I would be very unhappy if I could not update these utilities to use newer web standards as they become widely deployed because of a patent licensing fee that I have no way to pay. Up to now the web has developed a very strong presence in the worlds information infrastructure above competing proprietary standards largely because of the availability of open implementations. Please don't let the commercial interests of companies that can only see as far as their next years fiscal results destroy this marvelous system. Regards, Andrew Tridgell President, Samba Team
Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 20:41:25 UTC