- From: Steven Champeon <schampeo@hesketh.com>
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 00:22:38 -0400
- To: Daniel Phillips <phillips@bonn-fries.net>
- Cc: Jeffrey Zeldman <jeffrey@zeldman.com>, www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org, Web Standards Steering <wspsc@webstandards.org>, list@webdesign-l.com
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 -- hesketh.com/inc. v: (919) 834-2552 f: (919) 834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com
Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2001 00:22:48 UTC