About the patent policy in W3C web standards

  In my opinion there's very little to add to what Eben Moglen wrote in
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Sep/0650.html

  I think it's just a simple matter, I could say it's based even of the
nature of a 'Standard'. The purpose and meaning of any standard should be
to ease making different implementations agree on compatibility-related
issues, so that different products made by different developers can
agree; and Standards _must_ be open and royality-free, to allow free
software authors to support them. Standards ease compatibility, but
patents do limit the possibility to support standards. It's a strong
contraddiction.
  A questions arises very clear, I think it's lecit. Whose interests
is defending this purpose?

  Standards should serve the public, and not any particular large
companies which needs the freedom to be compatible taken away from its
free software competitors.

--
Luca Saiu, Italy

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2001 11:46:15 UTC