- From: Bob McDonald <bob-mcdonald@gmo.jp>
- Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 11:42:40 +0900
- To: <www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org>
To Whom it May Concern: First let me apologize for the lack of specifics in this e-mail there are too many points that I would like to touch on, and not enough time, as I am wrapped up in the creation of a website offering domain name registration. As I'm sure you can appreciate, with the release of the .info and .biz domain names, I am very busy at the moment. I closely follow the changes at W3C when I can, and try to slowly mold the company's sites to match these standards. On our current site we have begun to use CSS and are updating all of our html to make it html standards compliant. All personal sites that I have created in the recent past have been standards compliant to any standard that applied to the particular site. I am a big advocate of web standards, and think that standards are the only solution that will allow designers to communicate to viewers effectively, "whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability" to quote the W3C charter. I believe that patenting web standards is a very dangerous proposition in that it could very well lead to an Internet created only by those with the substantial financial wherewithal required to do so. Who is to set the royalty rates charged for use of these patents. It is my firm belief that in order for the W3C to follow it's own mission and charter, web standards need to remain patent free. Never should there arise a situation in which one has to pay to code their web page to standard. W3C has long been establishing standards which are only partially implemented by the major internet browsers. Now that Netscape and Internet Explorer have finally begun to come around and meet these standards, and Opera has come onto the scene, the W3C proposes implementing a policy that may make it expensive to follow or use these standards. As far as I can see, that is the quickest way to get the browsers to abandon their moves towards standards compliance, and head back towards proprietary coding. I hope that this e-mail is useful, and is not just a rehashing of comments that you have already read hundreds of times, but please put me down as one proponent of standards firmly against this patent policy. ------------------------- Bob McDonald マクドナルドボブ Division 5 Web Design Team ext. 1206 bob-mcdonald@gmo.jp -------------------------
Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 22:43:02 UTC