Please don't undo the good the W3C has achieved.

Dear Decision Makers,

In recent years the W3C has made great strides from a mostly ignored 
standards organization to THE organization for web standards.  The W3C has 
done immeasurable good by taking the multitude of pseudo-standards and 
creating real standards that are powerful, clear, concise, and available for 
all to use without royalties or restrictions on usage.

Allowing patents into future standards could undo all that good.  I for one 
would not use or support any W3C standard that incorporated any patented 
technology that placed any restriction on the use of the standard or required 
a royalty payment of any kind on the use of the standard.  I am not alone in 
my view and if the decision is made by the W3C to allow patents in future 
standards I see three things happening: Stagnation as millions of web-masters 
use only old W3C standards to avoid patent encumbrances, Fragmentation as 
pseudo-standards once again rise in popularity because there is no longer a 
compelling reason to use W3C standards, and Supersedence of the W3C by a new 
standards body willing to keep web standards free of patents.

Please do not undo all the hard work the W3C has put into creating open web 
standards and into gaining acceptance for those standards.

Thank you for your consideration and all the hard work in making widely 
accepted World Wide Web standards.

Sincerely,
Andrew A. Meier

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 15:37:39 UTC