- From: Carey Nation <careynation@ga.prestige.net>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 14:37:41 -0400
- To: <www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org>
Hi, I'm writing to voice my strong disagreement with the proposed change in patent standards for the W3C. While I understand the necessity and desirability of profit, I believe that the W3C accepting standards that can require royalties is a mistake. My reasons are as follows. 1. Open source development will cease on projects subject to royalties. These projects are under development by people who are generally unpaid volunteers, not large corporations. Open source is a great source for excellent tools, and it would be unconscionable to exclude such talented, dedicated people from the area. It is further undesirable to remove open source choices for the tools we all, as developers, may use. 2. As we all know, a standard is what you make it. It is quite usual to build a product using standards from multiple sources. It is also common to implement portions of standards if other portions do not serve the purpose at hand. After all, this is where XML comes from. Can you imagine the licensing nightmare inherent in a product with a few partially implemented standards contained in them? This will open a Pandora's Box of litigation, and only the lawyers will win. 3. Your standards will be ignored or worked around. Yes, I'm sure CompuServe made a lot of money from GIF, but how often do you see one now? PNG was created specifically to address GIF in a royalty free manner. The encoding and format in general are very similar. But as a developer, you don't have to write a check to implement PNG. I understand that companies want to reap some benefit from their development. Everyone is in business to make a profit. But let's please leave the standards open and make our profits with our products, shall we? It benefits everyone if interoperability is truly achieved. I believe that this is the intent with SOAP and .NET. If I read the author list correctly, a large portion of you work for companies directly involved with these technologies. Let's make our money with our products, not our standards. Sincerely, Carey Nation
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:38:42 UTC