- From: Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan@pobox.com>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 23:44:26 +0100
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I quote from the Overview: | our goal is to affirm the Web community's longstanding | preference for Recommendations that can be implemented | on a royalty-free (RF) basis. If that is truly the goal, then the proposed policy should require technology mandated in Recommendations to be available royalty-free. Until now, that has been the de facto policy of the W3C. It would be extremely unfortunate if this were to change; it is preposterous for the document proposing such a change to claim to be "affirming" the very policy it liquidates. * Consider some of the implications of non-RF technology entering the W3C's standards. For the moment, I'm going to be pessimistic and see what's the worst that could plausibly happen. 1. Reduction of choice. There are many web browsers. Internet Explorer has much the largest market share, but there are plenty more. Almost all of them are distributed for free. What will happen to this situation if essential web standards become unimplementable without royalties? Answer: it will be impossible to create free software that implements those standards. In view of the huge importance free software has had in making the WWW the success it has been, this seems clearly regrettable. What, then, will remain? Internet Explorer and a couple of other browsers owned by small companies. What next? 2. Single-vendor lockin. The obvious next step is for Microsoft to buy out those small companies. This is clearly to their advantage commercially. The consequence? It is impossible to get a standards-compliant web browser from any other source. What then? 3. The end of the W3C. At this point the W3C becomes irrelevant. There is no more need for universal open standards for the web when the only browser is Internet Explorer. This in turn will speed up the flight from "openness", of course. (Perhaps it won't be long before it's impossible to *create* valid web pages without software from a single vendor.) Now, there's another possible consequence which would doubtless greatly please at least one author of the Patent Policy Framework. 4. Disaster for free operating systems. So, Microsoft is the only source of compliant web browsers. Will they provide them to users of Linux or FreeBSD or any of the other minority operating systems out there? (I'll consider MacOS in a moment.) I don't see any reason why they should. They'd have nothing to gain. Well, now. Who's going to deploy Linux in their company when doing so makes the WWW inaccessible? ... And what about MacOS, or any other non-free minority OS out there? Remember that Microsoft have the only web browser in the world at this point; other companies making web browsers have been bought out. Apple could make their own web browser; Microsoft probably wouldn't try to buy them. So maybe they're OK. It might involve quite a major investment, though. Does Apple have the spare resources to do it? Who knows? * OK, end of dystopian fantasy. Let's suppose that doesn't happen; perhaps it might turn out that the only W3C Recommendations that aren't implementable RFily are sufficiently inessential that free browsers continue to be usable. (Note: free browsers are crucial in avoiding the nightmare above, because they cannot be bought out.) What then? There are still a number of problems. The W3C would no longer be able to distribute reference implementations of its standards. (I appreciate that many W3C Recommendations don't come with reference implementations, but it would be sad for it to be impossible for legal reasons.) The proposed requirements on W3C Members have no teeth, for two reasons. - Members can opt out. There is nothing whatever in the proposed policy that says that a WG cannot, or even should not, approve a Recommendation that is covered by patents not licensed on RAND terms. - A member can simply claim not to have been aware of relevant patents. Consider the following situation: EvilCorp Exploitation Inc. gets a representative onto the WG discussing the next revision of XHTML, and gives that representative strict instructions to push for such-and-such a new feature to be mandated. This feature is not implementable without using techniques patented by EvilCorp, but the representative is not told this. (He may think it very likely, of course, but he isn't required to make "extraordinary effort" to find out whether it's true.) The definition of "RAND" terms is highly unclear. Specifically, it permits "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalties or fees to be charged. What does that mean? The definition does not say. For instance, would a level of royalties such as to make it impossible for most people in Third World countries to purchase compliant browsers be acceptable? It's anyone's guess. * The one consequence that can be predicted with confidence here is that free implementations of WWW standards will become rarer. It seems to me that the success of the WWW (as of the internet generally) has been largely driven by the availability of free, standard, implementations. I've considered above some of the unfortunate consequences if users prefer "standard" to "free" when the two become disconnected; but if instead they prefer "free" then the result will be the marginalization of the W3C and its standards. That would be a shame, too. * I have one final comment. I first heard about this proposal today; the very same day as the Last Call period closes. (In fact, in some time zones it has already closed.) Looking at the archive of messages sent to www-parentpolicy-comments, it would appear that hundreds of other people did too. It does not seem that the proposal was well publicized. I suggest that instead of "the Patent Policy Working Group invites both public and W3C Member comment" it should perhaps have said "will grudgingly accept". -- Gareth McCaughan
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 18:45:32 UTC