Bad changes in policies

To whom it may concern,

as an MIT researcher and former employee of INRIA, both members of the W3C,
I am truly abashed by the news about the changes in patent policies you want 
to promote. 
I use to hold the W3C in the highest respect for his neutral position in the 
past and in its excellent work in standardizing the Web. The Web exists and 
works because there are some people willing to create free and open standard 
and it is/was never the will of a corporation like Microsoft for example. 
Standards are bad for corporations because it implies competition and they 
don't want that. 
What you would like to do is a major blow and insult to the work of many 
people, engineers and researchers who were and are dedicated to open and free 
standards for the Web. Please do remember that the html format is not an 
invention of a corporation but the initial work of researchers at the CERN: 
those big corporations behind the change of policies used to laugh at the Web 
as it was a few years ago and now they embrace it and try to sell the idea 
that they almost created it.
On a side note please consider what Internet and the Web are, what they 
represent and think about  what it would be if it is controlled by 
corporations, it would be like going back to the Middle Age and obscurantism. 
Please, please think about that and reconsider your positions.

I am firmly opposed to your change of policies regarding patents.

In hope that you will change your mind, I give you my best regards,
C.
-- 
| Christophe Prud'homme, http://augustine.mit.edu/~prudhomm
|
| Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence.  It settles 
everything.
| Some think it is the voice of God.
| -- Mark Twain

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:02:10 UTC