- From: Josh Fryman <fryman@cc.gatech.edu>
- Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 10:45:49 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- CC: fryman@cc.gatech.edu
To whom it may concern: As a PhD student in Computing at Georgia Tech, your proposed patent gives me great concern for the future it strives to bring about. The WWW was created as a natural extension to the existing network systems of the late 1980's to be an open and flowing mechanism to exchange information, ideas, and general communication. As someone who was active with the Internet long before the WWW came into existance, I feel I can accurately state that the concept of allowing patented technology that requires royalties into violates the very fundamental reasons the Internet was created. It is not wrong to allow patented technology except when allowing patented technology forces the users of the WWW environment into limited choices. Those companies willing to license their patents freely to anyone who wishes to implement the technology, asking only inconsequential restrictions [1], should be allowed. But patent holders who demand closed implementations on limited platform choices have no part in any standard governing WWW behavior and development. Perhaps more dangerous to your own organization and others, the rise of the WWW can be seen mirrored to an extent in the rise of P2P sharing systems such as Gnutella based systems. If your own standards provide a gateway for corporate entities to control the content and mechanisms of the WWW, your future will soon be found irrelevant by those same corporate entities. While this is transpiring, the community that endorses the original intent of Tim Berners Lee would develop an alternate model for systems similar to the WWW design, and the large support of the open source communities would remove your organization from any decision making path. I strongly urge you to throw this proposal into the trash, and ignore the demands of the corporate entities trying to push it through the W3C. Failure to do so will only wind up with your throwing your own organization into the trash. Regards, Josh Fryman [1] Inconsequential restrictions would be mandatory notices displayed indicating the patented technology was in use, including but not limited to patent holder contact information, logos, etc. It does not include any attempt to restrict the dynamic space of implementations, open source models, or any attempts to force revenue collection under any conditions.
Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 10:46:05 UTC