- From: Martin Wheeler <mwheeler@avalonix.co.uk>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:59:46 +0000
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
To whom it may concern: As a very busy trainer and consultant who sees half-a-dozen different clients per month for WWW training purposes, I have always used your site as a prime reference. Reason? It is authoritative, vendor-neutral and fee-free. Your proposed licensing scheme will kill this stone dead. (You will no longer be a fee-free site.) The result will be that I will stop using your site, and use one of the Free / Open Software clones that will inevitably spring up, instead. (Think mySQL here.) Eventually (and fairly rapidly, too), the W3C will lose its authoritative character, because the 50-odd companies I push towards you per year, *and* their employees, will no longer consider you as useful. Multiply this by *all* the other consultants / trainers / schools / colleges / universities who are your current clients, and you can see how quickly and how far the damage will escalate. A re-think is most definitely needed on your part. Why don't you put it out to your clients -- openly -- on the web. Ask *us* to help you come up with a solution? We each need the other -- co-operation, not conflict is the way ahead in this field. A bon entendeur, salut. Martin Wheeler GLASTONBURY England mwheeler@startext.co.uk http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/ mwheeler@avalonix.co.uk http://www.avalonix.co.uk/ -- *** Free Speech *** Free Dmitry Sklyarov *** Sell your shares in Adobe. Abjure all American non-free software. Help prevent Europe from following American corporate dictates: http://uk.eurorights.org/ http://freesklyarov.org/
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:57:28 UTC