Patent Policy Framework

I wish to make a comment about the recent Patent Policy Framework draft,
which I am told could allow W3C members to charge royalty fees for
technologies included in web standards.

In particular, I object to the inclusion of a "reasonable and
non-discriminatory" (RAND) licensing option in the proposed policy.
I believe that the exclusive use of a "royalty-free" (RF) licensing
model is in the best interests of the Internet community, and that RAND
licensing would always necessarily exclude some would-be implementors,
especially among open source and free software developers.  As a system
administrator and researcher at a large university, I routinely use open
and free software both as part of my work and to support my users.  I
have found it to be both technically more advanced and more stable and
useful that other options.

I applaud the W3C for its tradition of providing open-source reference
implementations and its work to promote a wide variety of interoperable
implementations of its open standards.  As an observer on several
IETF working group mailing lists, I recognize how hard that work can
be.  The W3C can best continue its work of "leading the Web to its
full potential" by continuing this tradition, and avoiding restrictive
licensing.


Tommy McGuire

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 13:23:36 UTC