Patents are dangerous to open standards

Any standard which is covered by a software patent will be unable to be 
implemented in open software (such as Mozilla or Konqueror) and thus will 
cease to be a standard.  Open standards and Open Source software are the 
future of this industry.  Software patents only slow progress and they 
themselves need to be eliminated.  If patents are allowed to cover W3 
standards, the Open Source community, which is far larger than the W3 and all 
commercial software companies combined, will no doubt disregard the W3 as a 
legitimate standards body and perhaps create their own organization for this 
purpose.  The only organization to gain from patents in web standards would 
be Microsoft, which would undoubtably like to make Internet Explorer the only 
web browser on earth.  We will not stand for this.  The obvious answer to web 
patents is NO.  Please do not disappoint us.

LinuxMan@psu.edu

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 21:35:09 UTC