- From: Filipe Santos <filipe@onebox.com>
- Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 07:11:14 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
As many others have already pointed out in a clear way, RAND licensing is incompatible with free/opensource implementations of the standard, which in general place few or no restrictions on further redistribution and/or use of the software. A large fraction of the Web infrastructure currently employs this sort of software, and one may expect that this trend will not change significantly. One could argue even that the *majority* of the web infrastructure is currently relying on free software, so the RAND proposal would represent an initiative against this status quo, giving working groups of presently little noticed but key future standards the opportunity to render a free software implementation (such as one licensed and distributed under the GPL) impossible or subject to the whims of patent holders, which are often diametrically opposed to those of the free software authors. As this patent policy proposal has starkly shown, it's difficult for most of the people actively creating this free software to follow the standards-making activities of the W3C consortium, so it's unreasonable to expect that this scenario will not arise, that is, a working group established under RAND defining an important standard that cannot be freely implemented and distributed under the GPL terms or BSD terms. Another argument is that software patents are not yet a legally accepted concept in many countries, such as the European Union ones, and they are a hotly contested subject. If the W3C has a neutral stand w.r.t. , it should refrain from building in such a concept in its standard making regulations *until* software, look-and-feel, and/or business-methods patents reach global and uniform acceptance, preferably within the scope of a specific international treaty. This is consistent with the fact that World is one of the W's in W3C, and most of the World has not yet established that software patents are legal. Without this, the RAND proposal can only be construed as a de facto and anticipatory acceptance of such patents worldwide by the W3C. So, the RAND licensing proposal should *not* be ratified. W3C recommended standards should not contain patented features. The only compromise that I can quickly think of is to add a clause covering *all* W3C standards stating that implementations distributed in source code format and demanding no licensing fee should be automatically granted a royalty-free use and distribution license from all patent holders that adhere to the (now modified) RAND licensing scheme. This idea should be more extensively worked out, which makes, given the complexity and breadth of the issue, the 11th October deadline clearly inadequate. The W3C should review this and re-launch discussions involving all interested parties, actively soliciting input and contacting developers of free software world-wide, in my opinion. -- Filipe Santos filipe@onebox.com - email (703) 234-3950 x6634 - voicemail/fax __________________________________________________ FREE voicemail, email, and fax...all in one place. Sign Up Now! http://www.onebox.com
Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 10:11:46 UTC