W3C patent policy

Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group:

I'm concerned about the recent Patent Policy Framework draft, which
could allow W3C members to charge royalty fees for technologies
included in web standards.

In particular, I strongly 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. That includes many of our own developers in academia.
Academia thrives on the free exchange of information, and royalty
payment issues invariably block research and even basic daily
operations in an academic setting, which in turn could have 
negative effects on the flow of knowledge and innovations 
from academia to the public in general and to for-profit 
organizations in particular. 

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. The W3C can
best continue its work of "leading the Web to its full potential"
by continuing this tradition, and saying no to RAND licensing.

Sincerely,

|  Dr. Christoph Weber              Sen. Applications Specialist
|  Research Computing, TPC21        858-784-9869 (phone)
|  The Scripps Research Institute   858-784-9301 (FAX)
|  La Jolla  CA  92037-1027         weber@scripps.edu        
|  http://www.scripps.edu/~weber/                   
Maybe it is true that we don't know what we have until we lose it, but
it is also true that we don't know what we have been missing until it
arrives.

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 15:50:32 UTC