No good can come of this. Please reject this proposal!

I am appalled by the actions the W3C is proposing in it's document, W3C
Patent Policy Framework [http://www.w3c.org/TR/patent-policy]. This
draft would promptly kill Open Source and Free Software. Several Free
web-browsers exist, most notably the cross platform Mozilla
[http://www.mozilla.org], and the KDE component Konqueror
[http://www.konqueror.org]. 

Patent licensing creates a barrier to both Free implementations and
small and medium companies. Only giant proprietary software companies
can cross this boundary, as only they can pay the (usually) exuberant
amounts that the patent holders tend to try to extract. In light of
that, the use of the term "reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties" is
an utter joke. 

I can not put any of these ideas as eloquently as Alan Cox, one of the
core Linux kernel hackers put it in his message at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Sep/0131.html,
and I urge you to heed his wise words.

Please, for the sake of a free Internet, please reject this proposal!

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|Elliot Glaysher        http://www.umich.edu/~glaysher|
|glaysher@umich.edu     http://netcomics.sf.net       |       
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