License fees

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. I think the whole notion  of a W3C-Standard as being
"authoritative" by good design will be superseded by the notion "oppressive"
because of business politics.

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.

I have been a scientist in high-energy physics, I have published all my
results and I will not receive any royalties or license fees for my work
apart from my salary during that particular time. I applaud the W3C for its
achievements and for introducing the scientific spirit into computer
technology.

If you mess with license fees, soon everybody will try to charge them for
whatever reason. Just say no. The web was built on CERN money and that gave
it a very good start.

Sincerely,

Ekkard Schnedermann
Ekkard@Schnedermann.de

Received on Saturday, 6 October 2001 16:11:14 UTC