- From: Dave Lacy Kusters <dkusters@yahoo.com>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:55:51 -0700 (PDT)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Throughout its history, the W3C has attained a reputation as an independent, open standards body. The W3C has been instrumental in the achievement of inter-operability. Without the open W3C standards that govern protocols the Internet would not be what it is today. This, however, will change if the W3C adopts the "Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory" (RAND) terms for W3C sanctioned recommendations. Under the proposed policy, the implementation of W3C standards would not be an open process. Any implementation would have to determine if royalties must be paid. This would destroy Free and Open Source implementations, including most of the reference implementations released by the W3C itself, for new standards. As a user of Free and Open Source software, this would be devastating. I would not be able to use anything that required the new W3C standards. As a Free software developer, I would be required to write new software without using W3C standards. The Free and Open Source communities would be cut off from the evolution of the Internet. Since most of the e-mail, web, ftp, and dns traffic on the Internet relies on Free and Open Source software, the Internet itself would be cleaved. No one will benefit from this. Please reconsider the RAND terms for W3C recommendations. They will not benefit users, developers, corporations, or the W3C itself. Dave Lacy Kusters Free and commercial software developer dkusters@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Listen to your Yahoo! Mail messages from any phone. http://phone.yahoo.com
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 18:55:53 UTC