- From: Keith Winstein <keithw@MIT.EDU>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 16:15:20 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- cc: keithw@MIT.EDU
I am confused as to how "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" is to be interpreted. The Patent Policy Working Group FAQ, (http://www.w3.org/2001/08/16-PP-FAQ.html) defines a "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) License" in part as one that, "may be conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties or fees". Defining a "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" license as one that may require the payment of "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" fees (as you apparently have done) does not actually define those terms; it just seems to repeat them. In the context of the world wide web, I am having a hard time understanding what sorts of fees could be "reasonable". For one, it would be nice if free software / open source software continued to be able to access the web. The ISO policy on patents, which I understand to be similar to "RAND", (under Fraunhofer's interpretation of the law) has successfully made it impossible to write free software which can encode or decode MPEG-2 video or encode or decode MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio in the United States. We also have a bizarre situation with some of the patents governing GIF. If W3C's idea of what "reasonable" means (apparently defined as "reasonable" by your FAQ) would exclude free software / open source software from being able to view material encoded with a W3C standard, I cannot imagine, given the context of the world wide web and the strong contributions peer-reviewed, unencumbered free software has made to it, that you would really consider this "reasonable". But if you mean "RAND" the same way ISO means it, this is apparently where you're headed. I hope you change your mind. Yours, Keith Winstein Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 16:15:21 UTC