Concerning Patents

Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group:

Since my companies work with the W3C standards, 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 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.

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,
-- 
Ryan Dibble <rdibble@dibble.net>

President & Principal Consultant
Dibble Group Inc.
http://www.dibble.net/

Founding Member
Spartacus Consulting LLC
http://www.spartacus-consulting.com/

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 22:50:18 UTC