- From: Eric Gerlach <egerlach@canada.com>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:12:22 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
To whom it may concern, My opinion on the proposed change in policy to tolerate patents made available on RAND terms is that the change is unacceptable considering the strong history and success of the World Wide Web and the W3C. The Internet has been built on a truly free-market system. Technologies which worked well and were open have come to dominate, and technologies which were deficient in some way or were not open have tended to fall by the wayside. There are many, many examples of both of these characteristics in action. Consider the following: - Gopher vs. WWW: Gopher was a technology that provided many of the things that the WWW now provides. However, WWW (a combination of the HTTP and HTML technologies) was more successful because of the extra features and the ease of use that they provided. Now, Gopher is largely non-existent. - Ethernet vs. Token Ring: Here the principle of open vs. non-open is demonstrated. Token ring, by most measures, was a superior technology for local-area networks. It provided a way to route packets to their destination without risk of collision, something which Ethernet notable lacked for many years. So why is Ethernet the more prevalent standard? Ethernet was made open, so anyone could make cards for it or develop software for it. Token Ring was a protected technology owned by IBM. It was not free to make or develop for. This is why it was pushed out of the market. The W3C has been a truly influential organization in developing excellent standards for the Internet and its users. The reason it is so successful is that it has been rightfully advocating free and open standards, and the average user has been able to accept and use those standards in their own development, thus popularizing them. If this stance were to change, the effects on the structure of the web as we know it would be moderate, but the effect on the reputation of the W3C as a standards body would be enormous. People would likely turn away from implementing standards that had patents and royalty components, and therefore the mind- (and market-) share of the W3C would decrease. The interesting thing is, this change in policy would have only moderate effect on the Internet as a whole. Standards with royalties attached to them would be hard-pressed to find mind- and market-share in a world where many of the tools are free and made by smaller developers. Alternate standards would emerge without royalties, and those would become dominant. This is already happening with the patent-protected MP3 standard and the Ogg Vorbis standard for music compression. The bottom line is, patent-protected standards in the digital world will not work, as they will be replaced with free and open ones in time. I would urge the W3C to stay its course on its noble mission to be a guidepost for Internet developers, and not succumb to the pressure of a few organizations. These organizations have the means to attempt to ratify their own standards without the "stamp of approval" of the W3C. Therefore, the W3C does not need to aid them in this manner. In fact, the W3C should be protecting the rights of the individual user to develop in an open environment. I am pleased to see that the W3C is considering many different options and paths, however this one is not beneficial to the W3C, the World-Wide Web, or the Internet. I urge the W3C to reject these changes in policy. Eric Gerlach Independent Internet Software Developer P.S. There have been >300 comments in the past 36 hours. I would recommend that the W3C extend the time to accept comments for this so that the full voice of the users of the Internet can be heard. Thank you.
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 15:12:37 UTC