RAND Licensing

• From: David Walker <dwalker@vorteon.com>
• Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 12:43:41 -0500
• To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
• Message-Id: <200110051234717.SM00145@there>

Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) Licensing is not what it seems.  Any 
time a fee is charged there is intrinsic discrimination due to the varying 
availability of finances and the convenience of providing payment across 
borders and with a variety of currency.

RAND=Proprietary and there is no reason to involve the W3C in handling of 
proprietary "standards".  Certainly the companies have the ability to handle 
their own development of proprietary "standards".

However wrong they are, software patents do exist and an eyes-open approach 
should be maintained toward handling them but a "standard" that is 
patent-encumbered and requires fees must be revoked and replaced with a 
Royalty-Free standard.

There are large numbers of brilliant developers (both open-source and 
closed-source) working individually or collectively via the internet that do 
not have the finances to deal with RAND nightmares or the interest to do so.

Thanks,
David Walker
VP Vorteon, LLC

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 13:43:14 UTC