Re: Comment on the Patent Policy Framework draft

I am responding on behalf of the team of 18 developers who have made a
living and contributed to Web development for the past six years.
We have done so in a context free of patenting fees and where wind patent
issues arose stimulated us to become creative and find work arounds.
There is no way a group like ours could continue to exist in the situation
where we would have to pay patent fees to create and develop web sites and
intranet solutions.  We have been eager to participate in Web projects and
fully adhere to W3C standards.  In the face of this new proposal we find
ourselves astonished at the W3C group’s lack of transparency and integrity:
an apparent so will attempt to quietly integrate a new policy that would
tremendously restrict individual developers while giving large corporations
the ability to gradually force onto the Web community their proprietary
technology such as Microsoft's hailstorm and .Net invasive technologies.
Until now Web development has immensely benefited both from the input of
individual developers as well as large corporations but mostly from the
diversity and open-mindedness of the community.  A move such as this would
steer Web development away from the decentralized, control and royalty free
environment that it is towards a more and more controlled (Corporation and
government) and restrictive environment.  We believe that the integration of
patents into the standards of the Web would in effect mark the end of
contribution by individual developers and small developer teams and thus
hamper the true growth and potential of the Web as a free (as in freedom of
speech) and open (as in open to new ideas, as in open to everyone) means of
communication.

None of us want to be refrained to usage of HTML 4.01, XHTML, XML 1.0 and we
believe that is also true for all individual developers were small developer
teams.  Such actions would cause great loss to Web development in
restricting its developer base to large corporations.

The explosive growth in usage and usability of Linux as server and desktop
environments shows clearly the benefits that individual developers bring to
the table when they do not have to pay licensing fees for developing and
expanding the existing code base.  Internet and Web development in line with
W3C's standards and recommendations in large part by individual developers
and small developer teams shows the tremendous growth that can be achieved
by supporting the widest possible developer base.

We sincerely hope to be able to continue working with and a long W3C's
proposed standards for they have in the past laid out the groundwork that
enabled our small group of developers and individual developers around the
world to contribute effectively to Web development.

At this point we all experienced tremendous concerns in witnessing the W3C's
attempt at passing discreetly such a framework.  We strongly oppose its
implementation for the reasons stated above and sincerely hope the W3C group
will get back to promoting policies and frameworks that truly enables the
widest source of positive contribution to Web development.


Sincerely,


Pierre Mathieu
Action Info
Montréal QC,
pierremathieu@iquebec.com





Pierre Mathieu
1051 Cartier Montréal
QC, H2K4C2
pierremathieu@iquebec.com