Please do not allow any W3C standard to be encumbered by patents.

If a "standard" is not freely licensed, then, with complete effectiveness,
it locks out free software.  Up until now, the W3C has supported a free
market in web software by its old settled policy of requiring that all
standards be free standards, in a sense close to that of "free software".

A move to trammeled standards, in addition to the complete suppression of
free software competitors, would also do grave damage to all but the few
companies with the patent departments and lawyers to fight the non-market
bureaucratic and judicial battles such non-free standards would induce.
Thus any non-free standard does not only eliminate free software, it
eliminates all but a few players, whose sole claim to domination is their
ability to pay for patent filings and lawyers' fees and gifts to
legislators.

Please do not allow the World Wide Web Consortium to be so crudely
captured by such a small group of companies, which companies did not
invent the Web, and which today do not control it.

Jay Sulzberger


For purposes of identification and free advertising only:

Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 02:42:03 UTC