The proposal is very harmful

                     Attila Mate
                     77 West 15th Street, Apt. 5J
                     New York, NY 10011-6832

Dear Sir/Madam:           Sun Sep 30 02:41:12 PM EDT 2001
   I believe your proposal on patents would destroy the
relevance of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and
would seriously damage the World Wide Web itself.
   In order to avoid this dangerous course, I believe
W3C should firmly insist on a policy of requiring that
the standards it endorses incorporate no patents or
other intellectual property unless the holder of
those patents or intellectual property agrees to license
it free of charge and without restrictions to any and all
for the purpose of creating and reading Web pages, and
for the purpose of creating software connected with
the creating, maintaining, reading, and displaying of
Web pages, whether these Web pages are placed on
the World Wide Web or they are placed on an internal
network.
   Anything less than a clear policy to this effect
will result in the splintering of the World Wide Web
and/or its takeover by one or more private companies.
The public would not be well served by such a course.
   I hope you will be able to give my comments serious
consideration.

                     Sincerely yours,

                     Attila Mate
                     Professor of Mathematics
                     mate@sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu
                     http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~mate/
                     Home phone: (212)929-0966

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:57:30 UTC