RAND license terms are rediculous!

I understand that the W3C has changed policy and are about to accept 
patented software as W3C aknowledge standards, the socalled RAND
licenses. This will in the end require the user to pay royalties to use
these standards.

This change of policy is in deep conflict with the philosophy of the
internet, which has been to allow free communication and exchange of
oppinions and ideas.

Also, this will allow companies to kill creativity and enthusiams of the
internet society for good, since it will no longer be posible to develope
free software which complies with these standards.

Thus it becomes more expensive for the end user to communicate and use
information technology. Just jo show you how rediculous silly such ideas
are: If the ISO-8859-1 character set was distributed under these terms, I
would have to pay extra to write my name correctly!

In the industrialized world people are able to afford such extra expenses,
but the increasing price of software will make it even harder for the
developing countries to develop!

If you insist on these new licencing terms, the oppression of the people
by the companies will give rice to increase piracy of software and
it will force development of new standards in the remaining free
community that are not defined by the W3C. 

Accepting the new licencing terms will induce the first political internet 
revolution determined to overthrough your "govermental policies", repla-
cing the W3C with a new organization.

So, if you believe in freedom and democracy, let not your mind be seduced 
by commercial interests. I do hope that you will reconsider and not accept
such licensing conditions. 

Regards, Erik

 The world is at your feet. Make it move, take a walk...
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Erik Nørgaard         cell:          (+45) 24 40 62 88 |
| Tagensvej 15, v. 303  mail:        norgaard@math.ku.dk |
| DK-2200 København N.  web:   www.math.ku.dk/~norgaard/ |
+--------------------------------------------------------+

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 07:00:36 UTC