Item 3 incompatibility with GPL section 7

	I noticed this on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html:

[...]
The proposed policy permits W3C members participating in W3 technical 
working groups to commit their patent claims "royalty-free" for use by 
implementers of the standard, but with "field of use" restrictions that 
would be incompatible with section 7 of the GNU General Public License. 
Such "field of use" restrictions, in other words, would prevent 
implementation of W3C standards as Free Software.
[...]

	Unfortunately I don't understand very well patent issues and even 
english! But looking at the item 3, it seems not very clear to me what 
can I do and what I can not. I can do an implementation of the standard, 
but can I do a derivated work of an already existing implementation of it?

	You know better than I do the importance of free software on web 
development, if the standards are incompatible with free software or at 
least with GPL'ed software, then they will not succeed and will not be 
widely used!

	You *must* work more on this issue toghether with the GNU people, this 
is *not an option*.

	Thank you very much for your consideration!!!

P.d.: the GNU General Public License: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

-- 
Ivan Baldo - ibaldo@adinet.com.uy - http://ibaldo.codigolibre.net/
ICQ 10215364 - Phone/FAX (598) (2) 613 3223.
Caldas 1781, Malvin, Montevideo, Uruguay, South America, planet Earth.

Received on Wednesday, 11 December 2002 12:44:03 UTC