- From: hugh d fegely <wolffe@wolffeden.net>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 20:31:25 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- Message-Id: <20010930203125.1916bb62.wolffe@wolffeden.net>
Greetings As an avid user of the internet, as well as a private webdesigner and sysadmin for my network, I am writing to encourage the W3C to stop efforts supporting the royalty-based "standards" which will require those of us "in the trenches" using these standards to pay for the usage. Currently there is quite a fervor that gets raised when the originators of the Compuserv graphic format GIF decide to go on a crusade against "illegal use" of what has become a de-facto standard for web graphics. Most people have migrated their former GIFs to the PNG format now because of this. It is my opinion, and I believe it is shared by many developers, that anything that is set as an "internet standard" should be maintained as "royalty-free" for use. Imagine if the HTML standards were fee-based; how many of the advances that we have today would never have happened if html, active server pages, java server pages, php, perl, and so many other advances (including such simple things as tables and frames) were only used based on the payment of a "fee"? The majority of the companies which are looking to be able to charge fees for their "standards" are mega-corporations which really don't need the income other than to line their profits? And yet they are only going to end up hurting the people they are supposed to be supporting, in the end -- their customers. The internet was created as a free environment - free for use, free for advancement, free to share and create amongst everyone in the world. Supporting fee-based standards goes against everything which founded it -- including the same principles which went into the founding of the World Wide Web and your Consortium. Standards should be agreed upon by everyone...and standards should be free. To support anything else would end up creating chaos on the internet -- people can only do certain things with certain programs, and will no longer be able to freely share information. Sincerely, ~Hugh D. Fegely~ -- hugh d fegely wolffe@wolffeden.net || To look into the eyes of http://wolffeden.net/Wolffe/ || a wolf.. is to look into Gnu Privacy Guard Key ID 0xA59476B4 || the depths of your soul.
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 20:29:32 UTC