- From: Seth Nickell <snickell@stanford.edu>
- Date: 29 Sep 2001 22:18:03 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I am extremely concerned with a few probable effects of the W3C allowing standards to be created that have licensing restrictions (e.g. you need to obtain a license). The phrase "Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory" is extremely dangerous and open to wide interpretation. As a free software author, I sincerely doubt that "reasonable" (particularly with the non-discriminatory clause) will allow me to continue my work without paying licensing fees...though from my perspective it would be unreasonable for me to pay licensing fees when I gain no benefit from the work myself. Could this point please be publicly clarified? To a company a few thousand, or tens of thousands of dollars isn't a terrible amount. For me, its the difference between being able to (legally) implement a standard or not. I suspect this is true of most free software authors. We already have enough standards boards implementing "standards" that only companies can implement legally, I would hope that given its non-commercial / educational roots the W3C will maintain some distance from the profit making process in favour of standards that better the experience of the internet for all users. You see, developers are not the only ones affected by non-free standards. My users may be unable to access critical features or content. As time goes on, I predict more and more content will only be available with some form of licensing if *any* is allowed. Can you imagine the result if free software authors had to pay $2000 to CompanyX every time they wanted to implement HTML4 or CSS? The first adopters of W3C standards often (perhaps usually) are free software projects...we thrive off standards. Where is SVG widely implemented? MathML? Mostly in the free software world. I can assure you that most of the authors of these programs have a hard enough time justifying the time they spend on gratis development, very few if any will be willing to cough up thousands of dollars to implement a non-free standard. Just consider the problems encountered by free software developers implementing the ISO MPEG standards, in particular MP3 (which are covered by Fraunhofer patents). Then of course there are inherent conflicts in the licensing model with free software, like if licensing is done on a per-user basis, or the very viability of implementing something under the GPL when it is already covered by a non-public-domain patent... Under many interpretations of the GPL this would not be legal. Please don't turn the W3C into yet another forum for corporations to exert their muscle and try to eek money out of developers and the public. How is it a standard when a significant contingent of the development community is legally prohibited from implementing the "standard"? If specific exception were provided for development done under a license which meets the Debian free software guidelines, perhaps I could stomach a change like this (though even then I'd prefer that license encumbered standards never be used). sincerely, -Seth A. Nickell (GNOME/Nautilus developer, http://www.gnome.org)
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 01:18:07 UTC