Re: Policy requires definitions, remedies, guarantees

on Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 12:16:36AM +0200, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> While I find your commentary thoughtful and well written, a close
> reading shows it to support the idea that RAND licencing has a place
> in W3C standards.  In the above quote you suggest that only
> "essential" standards should remain royalty-free.

As the primary author of the commentary, I'd like to state for the
record that our primary goal was to object to the RAND licensing in
toto, but given that two thousand people had already apparently
objected already, based on a quick reading of the archives of this
list, it seemed more appropriate for us to show how the RAND policy
itself, taken apart from any consideration of RF vs. RAND, was
unworkable and dangerous as well.

The terms "essential", "core", and so forth are taken from the policy
itself, and are not defined. The point of the exercise was to show
that not only was RAND licensing a bad idea in a practical sense, but
that the license in its current incarnation was so poorly thought out
that it would not only jeopardize open source/free software and other
related efforts, which the W3C has never been particularly supportive
of anyway, but that such a license would also allow any Member to
sabotage any WG simply by filing for a patent (even if it were never
granted).

In my opinion, and in the opinion of many on the WaSP steering
committee, this suggests that the W3C hasn't even considered the
wide-ranging effects the policy would have on every aspect of all of
its endeavors, not just on the fringe of "non-essential" technologies
being proposed for consideration as standards.

Steve

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Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2001 00:22:48 UTC