patent policy may harm Free Software

Hi,

As a Free Software developper and consultant, I feel very concerned
by your patent policy.

You seem to want at the same time allow royalty free use of patented 
work to implement standard, but still allow patent holders to be 
able to define a "field of use" clause in their RF patent licenses. 

I fear this clause is precisely something which could prevent 
Free Software developpers to implement the standards you
define. Free Software licenses, like for example the GNU
General Public License, allow people to use, modify or
redistribute Free Software for ANY PURPOSE, provided that
the rest of the licensing terms are respected.

So a developper who just implements a RF but patented W3C 
standard, may not be able to redistribute his work to all
if people who would use it can't reuse its code for any
purpose (some purposes being specifically excluded by
the "field of use" clause)

Sincerely hoping you will change your mind and forbid
such "field of use" clause in your standards.

You could go even further by disallowing any patented work
in your standards.

bye, and thanks in advance for taking this message into 
consideration when you'll make a definitive choice. 

Jerome Alet

Received on Monday, 2 December 2002 10:09:22 UTC